can you eat Fertilized eggs ? are all eggs Fertilized .. many question - please help !

Hi Sandra,

 

We have a rooster and most of our eggs are fertilized.  We've been eating them and seem to be doing just fine.    To my knowledge they're perfectly healthy to eat and will stay good as long as any other egg - as long as your hens AREN'T sitting on them and you're collecting them regularly.  There are some good threads on here about how to tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs.

 

Our rooster stays in the same coop with our hens and they all sleep together on the roosts. 

 

I hope this helps!

Edited by SIMZ - 3/3/12 at 6:04am

If you have a rooster in the flock, then all the eggs are likely to be fertilized.  Fertilized eggs taste no different than non-fertilized eggs.  The only difference happens when the eggs are incubated.  You can crack open one of your eggs and see if they're fertilized.  A non-fertilized egg will have a white spot on it.  A fertilized egg will have the white spot - but it has a bullseye appearance.

As long as you don't allow your hens to sit on the eggs (collect daily atleast), they are perfectly safe to eat.  The rooster's "portion" of the egg appears as a small "bullseye" on the yolk.  It doesn't change the taste, healthy properties, or anything.  The eggs can be collected and stored as any other eggs are.

 

As to whether to keep the rooster or not.. would your neighbor's mind the crowing?

  Just think about it. Any of the old folks that had chickens and depended on the rooster to keep them in eggs,  more chicks,  all ate the same eggs the hens set on. Don't know it every harmed any of the older folks. I know it didn't my grandma and her 13 children. Nor me and my wife now. When we cook with eggs around here, we have a choice, cook with um or put um in an incubator.

Don't put the young chickens in with the older ones till they are closer to the same size. Then do it gradually, so the older birds can get accustomed to seeing the younger ones. New birds can get bullied to death, literally. There are threads on this forum about introducing chickens to the established flock. You might want to use the search feature to do a little research.

What you can do is put a small dog kennel in the coop and put your chicks in it when the two older go out then you can let the chicks out to explore the coop, while you watch. They will get used to each other faster, by the time they are a little older everyone will know each other.