10 Facts About the Amazing Egg

Spring is supposedly in full swing and, when the weather warms, up my hens lay more.

Most of them have laid all winter-the layers especially but the fancy breeds like the Pekins and my silkie tend to have a little break over the winter months.

I’m sure you know we love eggs here. To eat or to hatch so I have come up with ten interesting facts you may or may not know about eggs.

1. The average egg contains only 72 calories. There isn’t much fast food that can match that. After all, it takes seconds to scramble an egg.

2. Where you keep your eggs is personal choice. The official guidelines is to keep them in the box in the fridge but ours are so fresh and we use them so quickly that we simply keep them at room temperature in an egg rack.

3. The fresher the egg, the harder to peel when hard boiled. A freshly laid egg is impossible to peel. If I use my own eggs, I have to keep them back for a few days in order for them to peel well enough. If I need them sooner than that, I usually buy eggs.

4. Eggs are a natural source of vitamin D so perfect for growing children.

5. According to statistics from egg.info, the average person consumes 173 eggs per year. My farmer has two eggs for breakfast every day so he eats 730 eggs a year. Much higher than the average. I laughed to myself about this.

6.The colour of the shell depends on the breed of the hen and it has no effect on the contents. The only thing that can affect the colour of the yolk is the diet of the hen. A corn-rich diet will produce a yellower yolk. Friend of mine once gave their hens curry and the yolks after that were an interesting colour.

7. If the sight of chicks makes you feel funny about eating eggs, be safe in the knowledge that there would be no chicks without a cockerel. Hens lay eggs whether there is a cockerel in the flock or not. I’d say all eggs you buy in the super market will come from hens who have probably never even seem a cockerel.

8. The UK produced 10.782 million eggs in 2017. By produced, I imagine this means commercially so it does not include backyard chickens.

9. If you buy eggs with a Lionmark, you can visit their website and trace the eggs back to the farm where they were laid. I think this is amazing and would be a great activity to do with children. I even bought half a dozen eggs from the supermarket to see where they were from.

10. White eggs were the norm in the UK until they were sidelined for the brown eggs you see in the shops now. Eggs can come in green, blue, pink and even purple. I love having different coloured eggs in my egg rack.

We do eat loads of eggs. It’s probably because we always have a lot of them (especially in the summer when the hens see more sunlight and the weather is warmer). I love hearing facts about eggs. Do you know any weird and wonderful ones?

If you want to find out more about eggs, my favourite websites are:
https://www.egginfo.co.uk
http://www.britisheggindustrycouncil.co.uk/Home/

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