jumbo egg layers

[sydney13]

when you see in the grocery store jumbo eggs, what breed of chickens would they normally use to lay those? would be a breed like a orpington or something?

 

[Illia]

No, most store bought eggs are from Leghorns. Orpingtons lay large brown eggs. I believe it is a change of diet or just a selection of the largest eggs. Often they are very porous and thin shelled, which indicates poor health.

If you want BIG eggs, try getting some Easter Eggers. In almost every case I've known, they lay either large or jumbo (sometimes extra jumbo) sized eggs. Mine are HUGE. Plus, they come in many colors.

 

[Kittymomma]

My red sex links lay jumbo eggs most of the time, but if you really like the big eggs get some ducks. I have one Ruen hen and she lays extra-jumbo light green eggs daily. I've heard people talk about a "fishy" taste to duck eggs but that has not been our experience. The yolk is larger proporsionatly (sp) and the white is thicker then the chicken eggs, but taste wise I can't tell them apart.

 

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
My Easter Eggers have never laid an extra large or jumbo egg. I would say medium, maybe an occassional large.

White Faced Black Spanish lay extra large to jumbo sized white eggs!

 

[mstricer]

One of my EE girls lay huge jumbo blue eggs, saw it happen it wasn't pretty

 

[Kanga77510]

One of my little red hens (red sex link) lays a jumbo every other day or so. I don't know if it's a true jumbo or not, but it bottoms out my egg scale. I don't know which bird exactly lays it, but I know it's a red sex one, my other two layers produce medium green and blues.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

If you are talking white eggs, they are from Leghorns, commercial brown eggs are from red sex-links. No flock is perfectly uniform. When a flock is laying a majority of large eggs there are always a percentage that are x-large and jumbo, some even larger than the standard jumbo. The average egg size goes up as the flock ages. The ones that are much larger than than jumbo are usually pulled and not processed as they don't fit through the processing equipment too well. The eggs are sorted by size and grade. Most large, Grade A eggs are sold as shell eggs, with most small, medium, x-large, jumbo, and Grade B eggs being sent to the breaker to be turned into other egg products, although some of them are sold as shell eggs as the market permits, but the large eggs are pretty much the standard and the most popular.

Somebody mentioned that those eggs are sometimes thin-shelled and porous which is a sign of poor health. It's not necessarily due to poor health, many times they are thin shelled because the hen has laid an egg much larger than her usual egg and just doesn't have the resources to wrap it up in a nice shell. As the eggs get larger, the shells generally get thinner. That's just the way it works...