This is a sampling of what comes out of the chicken coop at Tulipwood.
Very strange indeed.
On the left is a “pullet egg,” in between are some version of medium and large eggs that you would find in the grocery store, and on the right is a “double yolk” egg.
Pullets are chickens that have just started to lay, which happens in about 6 months. They start out by laying one egg every three to four days. By the time they are 30 weeks old the eggs usually are a normal size and they lay almost once per day. In the second year a chicken slows down and only lays about every other day.
These pullet eggs don’t have a yolk. It basically means their “laying mechanism” isn’t fully revved up. They have other names for these small eggs… like “dwarf” eggs or “wind” eggs or…um, “fart” eggs.
In the old days, if a mature hen laid pullet eggs they were called “cock” eggs. Since they had no yolk and cound’t hatch, the myth was they were laid by roosters…
Heredity causes some chickens to lay double yolked eggs more often than normal, especially “heavy-breed” hens. I think Lucy is definitely one of them. She’s a fat chicken. But it’s most common in the beginning when the chickens are starting to figure things out. Double yolkers happen when one yolk somehow gets “lost” and joins the next yolk. That’s about as scientific as I get. Amen.
This is the pullet next to the double yolk…. zero yolk… two yolks. Nature’s strange happenings continue at Tulipwood…
