How do farmers control whether a chicken lays an eating egg or a reproductive egg and how can they tell which kind is laid?
In: Biology
All eggs are eating eggs unless you want to hatch more chickens. Hatching eggs require fertilization from a rooster. On commercial farms, hens that lay eating eggs rarely, if ever, are given any ‘private time’ with a rooster. They may bring in a rooster to give them motivation but not allow fertilization. My family raised chickens when I was a kid and we had a rooster. There is a visible difference when you crack open a fertilized eggs because the yolk and the egg white are joined together by threads or tubules. I don’t recall the eggs tasting any different (Summertime eggs were definitely better because the chickens were eating a lot of bugs. The yolk is a deeper yellow.)
Chickens lay eggs whether they are fertilized or not, so the easiest way to make commercial eggs is to not allow the males to mix with the females.
But if you need to check an egg you just hold it up to a bright light. You can see enough through the shell to tell if a chick is in there. Commercial operations do this with automated machinery.
> How do farmers control whether a chicken lays an eating egg or a reproductive egg
You remove any roosters from your farm
> how can they tell which kind is laid?
They’re the same thing. If you get a fertilized egg soon enough (eggs are usually collected in the morning or at night every day) then a chick won’t grow and you can eat it like it was never fertilized at all
Chickens will lay eggs no matter what. It’s basically a daily chicken period. Only if they are fertilized by a rooster beforehand will they form baby chicks. If you keep chickens away from roosters, all eggs will be eating eggs.
Edit: I know both fertilized and unfertilized eggs can be eaten. OP said eating eggs and reproductive eggs so I stuck with the same terminology assuming they meant how do farmers know what eggs are able to become chicks and which ones won’t.
Hens will lay eggs regardless of whether or not they’ve been fertilized. So it’s pretty easy to make sure you’re only getting food eggs – keep the rooster away from the hens.
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