Inclusion in yolk

[DeadDogClub]

I was going to mix this egg into some blue cheese crumbles for a quiche, but when I cracked it open, I noticed the hard inclusion in the yolk.

I have been previously told that rooster ejaculate can calcify. Is that true; if so, does that appear to apply here?

I'd just like to know for my own morbid curiosity and if one of my egg customers finds something like this one day, I'd like to have an educated response.

Because eating an embryo that came out of a birds privates *can* get weirder...

Thanks!

 

[bobbi-j]

Sometimes, when the egg is being "manufactured", a piece of tissue can break loose and end up in/on the egg. Sometimes called a "meat spot. You don't see this stuff in your store-bought eggs because they're candled, and only the perfect ones get to the store. If you're picking your eggs daily, you will not have an embryo in your egg. That's pretty much not visible until about 3 days after incubation, and at that point you will notice blood vessels running through your egg.

 

[DeadDogClub]

Thanks for the information on meat spots. Now I can tell a customer with confidence that they are edible! I either haven't encountered one or wasn't paying enough attention...probably the latter. A meat spot is easier to explain than what I was blaming on my thirty roosters!

My inner Bill Nye nerd does have to say that an embryo is formed in a fertilized hen before she even lays the egg shell that holds it. We just don't see the development with our naked eye until like you correctly said a few days later if they are being incubated.

 

[bobbi-j]

Thanks for the information on meat spots. Now I can tell a customer with confidence that they are edible! I either haven't encountered one or wasn't paying enough attention...probably the latter. A meat spot is easier to explain than what I was blaming on my thirty roosters!

Yep, perfectly harmless. Just a glitch in the system.

My inner Bill Nye nerd does have to say that an embryo is formed in a fertilized hen before she even lays the egg shell that holds it. We just don't see the development with our naked eye until like you correctly said a few days later if they are being incubated.
If this were the case, all hatches would be "staggered hatches" where chicks would be developing and hatching at all different times. The egg is fertilized, but the cell division causing the the embryo to grow doesn't happen until true incubation starts. That is when the egg is incubated consistently either by a hen or artificially. (Unlike humans and other mammals where development begins at conception.) That's how they all hatch within a 24-hour period. Well, the majority. Sometimes you get an early one or two, and sometimes a couple of slow pokes.

 

[aart]

Is it just that one piece on the yolk that concerns you?.....or what is the other white stuff in the bowl, the blue cheese?
Was the piece on the yolk rock hard or kind of squishy?

 

[TalkALittle]

Actually, DeadDog is correct. The egg has already started to develop before it is laid. Within hours after fertilization and before the egg is even laid, it is hundreds of cell divisions into its development and can be considered an embryo. The lower temp of the environment outside the hen's body causes further cell division to cease and the egg to go dormant until the temp rises when the hen begins to sit on the egg and cell division resumes.


http://www.poultryhub.org/physiology/body-systems/embryology-of-the-chicken/

 

[aart]

Actually, DeadDog is correct. The egg has already started to develop before it is laid. Within hours after fertilization and before the egg is even laid, it is hundreds of cell divisions into its development and can be considered an embryo. The lower temp of the environment outside the hen's body causes further cell division to cease and the egg to go dormant until the temp rises when the hen begins to sit on the egg and cell division resumes.


http://www.poultryhub.org/physiology/body-systems/embryology-of-the-chicken/

I have noticed that older fertile eggs have larger 'bullseyes'....wondered if it was 'development'.