Mama, Where Do Eggs Come From?

My backyard. It's like watching a live show at the community theater. Anything can happen, and it will. Even Shakespeare can't compare, and we have some really good Shakespeare productions where I live.

The scarlet runner beans take center stage growing up and over poles forming a nice bean teepee even though the neighborhood deer have helped themselves to lunch a few times. Butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, and predators come to visit. Worms eat food scraps and poop compost. Tomatoes turn orange and red. And the chickens scratch for bugs and worms, and help themselves to the strawberries before I can pick them.

There are things going on that I can't see, too, like the onions and potatoes growing underground. And once the hens started laying, I started to think about all those egg cells in their bodies, and it was no longer enough just to open up the nesting box and help myself to the finished product.

Endlessly fascinated, I needed to know more.

It is not the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, that I have pondered. That one seems easy. Clearly it was the chicken, because what would fertilize and incubate the egg if it were first? I haven't spent any time on why the chicken crossed the road, either.

But I did wonder how a hen can lay an egg without breaking its shell, so I've poked around for answers on the Internet. You should never believe everything you read on the Internet, of course, but backyardchickens.com seems pretty reliable. You've got questions? Social media for chicken farmers has answers.

Apparently, the shell hardens after the egg is laid. The eggshell, formed and given pigment at the last stage before being laid, stays kind of elastic, like a hard boiled egg, when the chicken first pops it out, and it toughens up within minutes of being released into the world with the traditional bawwwwk!bawwk!BAWK!! birth announcement.

It takes a hen 25 to 26 hours for an egg to travel through its reproductive system, I learned. Always during daylight, never at night, because, when daylight (or artificial light) hits the chicken's eye, it stimulates a photo-receptive gland and triggers ovulation. Usually, eggs are laid between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m.

The yolk comes first, and as it travels through the oviduct, it rotates while it forms the surrounding egg white. There are eggs queued up at different stages of development working their way through the hen at any given time. Here'a picture someone took of what was found inside a hen that got butchered.

One of my hens has been laying double yolk eggs; I've had four of them so far, and I'm getting so that I can tell which ones they are before I break the egg by its bigger size. This is normal when a hen first begins to lay and is getting her reproductive rhythm in order. It means she's ovulating too fast and needs to slow down and just chill. You know how those young 'uns are. Always in a hurry.

There's a lot of other weirdness that can happen in the egg laying, too. An egg within an egg, yolkless eggs. Oddly shaped eggs. Hens that don't lay at all.

Here's another link from a reliable source with some fun chicken facts. You like to dance like a chicken? There's a special day for that...

This morning, I found an egg lying there on the dirt in the chicken pen like it just accidentally fell out. Or maybe it was too much bother to go into the nesting box and be meditative and still for a few minutes.

In any case, I think it's time for breakfast. Eggs, of course.