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Double Yolked Eggs.
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On Saturday the Mrs bought half-a-dozen eggs from the butchers. the last was cracked open this morning. All six were double yolked.
Now I know there is nothing unusual about a double yolk, but getting six in one box, is that unusual. What's the most you have had in one go?
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.You can get them deliberately boxed as six double-yolk eggs. I remember in Hong Kong the supermarkets sold eggs loose and there were spotlights over the eggs where you could hold each one up to see if it was double-yolked (or fertilised?) and little old adies would spend hours sifting through the eggs to ensure they got the ones they wanted.
Well. 'double yolkers' are, when you think about it unfertilised twins. twins in humans and chickens are a genetic trait. I.E. if twins run in you family your likley to have them yourself.
As chickens are mostly battery farmed and all female, they are bred often from one male, if the male has the genetic trait it is passed on to all the second generation hens and the whole farm is likley to produce double yolks. (hugely simplified explanation)
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They must have been selected as double-yolkers, or at least been sold as super-size eggs.
I put a double-yolker under a hen once and got the chicks to pipping stage, but sadly both died before hatching fully.
Until a day or so before laying, the hen's eggs are just a cluster of yolks of varying sizes. Each day one yolk sets off down the oviduct and is coated in turn with white, membrane, shell, colour, spots and wax. If two float off together down the oviduct, they can both get incorporated into one egg.
Not sure if there's much genetic effect -- many hens produce the odd one, especially if they lay good big eggs anyway.
I came across this site because I am wondering if double-yolk eggs produce twin chicks if left to mature. I'm told that "mother's" ovulation time is all out of whack after moulting and that is the reason for double yolks...though I've not confirmed this.
A friend of mine has learned that the most yolks in one egg is NINE! wow And this friend read from a man who raises chickens that he has never seen twin chicks hatch from one egg, saying that they would be too big for one shell to hatch them. Still, this is interesting to me.