Eggs They Don't Sell At Stores

On my daily Easter egg hunt, sometimes my girls leave me surprises in the nesting boxes of my coop.

Wrinkle Egg

Today when I collected eggs, I found this beauty called a wrinkle egg. I've had a couple wrinkle eggs over the past three years, and they are produced when the egg white is a bit watery inside the chicken. The extra liquid makes the shell harder to form. Yes, we eat the wrinkle eggs, and they taste perfectly normal. They also feel really cool when you touch them, the shell feels smooth and hard until you get to the wrinkles.

Before I had chickens, I never realized how many of these "special" types of eggs are thrown out before they are sold at grocery stores. Eggs that are not perfectly shaped, like the wrinkle egg, or aren't the correct size will never be sold at the store.

Double yolker egg is on the left.

About once a month, my girls lay me a double yolker egg which is about double the size of a normal egg. This type of egg doesn't fit in a normal egg carton. I can't even imagine how hard a double yolker is to squeeze out for the girls, OUCH! On some of the chicken blogs I follow, a couple ladies have even found triple yolkers in their coop. If that ever happens to me, I'm marching straight to the nearest gas station to buy me a lotto ticket!

Another type of chicken egg that I collect about two times a year is called a fairy egg or a fart egg. I prefer calling them fairy eggs because it sounds much more dainty and ladylike. Fairy eggs are about the size of a quarter, and they are produced inside the chicken before the yolk drops during ovulation. I've heard you can eat fairy eggs, but I've never chosen to do so because they are extremely gooey and slimy once cracked. I feed them back to my chickens once the kids and I have ooo'd and awe'd how cute they are.

Our very first egg that was "laid' in our coop, was a very special and unique egg. My little lady, Rosie, was about to turn four, and the only birthday present she wanted that year was to find the very first egg in the coop. I told my chickens they better make my princess's birthday dream come true and get to work! And lo and behold, on the actual day of her birthday, she found a hot pink, sparkly egg in the coop. Unfortunately, that was the only time the chickens laid such a beautiful egg (wink, wink, nod, nod!), but Rosie has always remembered finding the very "first" egg in the coop.

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly