I’d read about these “interesting” eggs on the Backyard Chickens website, but we’d never seen one until last week. Caleb brought in some eggs from the after-lunch gathering, and among the normal-sized ones was this little peanut. It looks like a pullet egg, but smaller.
If it’s what I think it is, these eggs are often known by a rather unpleasant-sounding name, but I’ve read that you can also call them fairy eggs. They commonly have no yolk.
We expected it to be unusual on the inside, so we cracked it open to check. It had what appeared to be yolk-ish in texture, but it was very pale (well, compared to farm eggs anyway) and abnormal-looking, as you can see.
We did a little research and learned that these eggs are typically caused by a piece of reproductive tissue that sloughs off inside the hen and is then treated by her body as a “yolk,” with the egg then forming around it. Eww.
Has anyone else ever got an egg like this? We haven’t had any more since, and we aren’t sure which hen laid it. It wasn’t a pullet, though, as we don’t have any of those right now.
I couldn’t believe it when I read this post because we got a tiny egg just like this today so this is timely info for us. This is the first time we’ve seen one as well. I cracked it open, and it looks similar to yours in that the center is firmer than the outer “white” area. But our center is more clear with just a small glob of yellowish tissue in the center. Very interesting.
Interesting! I’ve never heard this before. Learn something new all the time.
Jill, when we had chickens when you and Curt were little, we got a couple like this. I just thought it was a new hen laying and her eggs were smaller. HMMMM guess not.
We have gotten those eggs on occasion and they are interesting up next to our regular eggs. I never knew what caused them.
Thanks for the information! We have gotten eggs like that on rare occasions. Like Trixi, never knew what caused them. My husband thought they were a drop in (or out) from a pigeon. I never used the yellow blob ones, but would add the yolkless ones as extra white in Gluten Free bread or pancakes.
We got on last week…just thought it came from one of our new young layers…maybe I’m wrong now, from reading your blog. It’s exactly the same as yours.
Should I just throw it out? It’s still in my frig.
It depends what it looks like on the inside. Maybe yours is just a pullet egg, in which case it will look normal on the inside (and not like my “yolk”. My picture doesn’t really show the scale well, because our little egg is definitely smaller than pullet size. Crack it in a separate bowl before you put it in anything, just in case.
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