The Great Wal-Mart Organic Eggs Experiment (Pics)

[Frenchy chick]

Candling in two days...go get me a drink, will you

 

[Andora]

I'm interested to see if any were fertile! We used to eat that brand of eggs before our girls started laying, and I've never seen a fertile egg from those kind.

Our Whole Foods and local Good Foods Co-op both sell local free range eggs. I want to buy the extra expensive gourmet green eggs from Whole Foods and try to hatch those.

Gourmet green eggs.

They sell them for like $6 a dozen.

(I wish they sold gourmet marans eggs.)

I'm going to try it after we move in the next few moths.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
I'm not sure if you mean all organic egg production being from the same breed, or any given producer only having one breed. At any rate, no, they aren't all the same. I'm sure there are organic egg producers that only have one breed, but some have more than one. You can tell that because they have both brown eggs and white ones, and some even sell blue and green ones. And, the chicks that folks have hatched from different brand/source organic eggs, have not all been the same.

I'm sure that the folks hatching store eggs are no threat to the breeders, or diversity of chicken breeds.

Thats what I was saying, a specific producer's brand could only have one breed. Unless you've been there, I don't see how you could completely know for sure. And if someone only wanted some laying hens, it wouldn't really matter. I'm just saying, I hope people do not buy eggs from certain producers when you can spend a little more on people who care about their birds and eggs. Just because a brand may say 'organic' does not still mean that the birds are in cages. That said, I don't sell hatching eggs.

Like I said, if a producer sells eggs of more than one color, obviously they have more than one breed. But the folks who just want a few chickens and don't care what breed they are, this isn't an issue anyway.

We're not talking about spending "a little more". We're talking about spending a lot more. $4 or so vs. $15 or more. I've spent as much as $29 on one dozen shipped eggs. Not everybody has a lot of money. Many people are living on pretty tight budgets particularly people with children. This is a way those people can still enjoy hatching some eggs, raising some chicks, and raising some hens to lay eggs for them. Maybe even having some roos to go in the freezer, albeit most likely scrawny ones, from egg breeds, but tasty chicken and dumplings nonetheless.

If you are opposed to trying this, then don't do it. No problem. To each his or her own.

 

[MotherMal13]

Quote:
SEE!!!!! Someone else trying to take my seat!.... I'm telling you all, I have an attack roo here with me and I'm not afraid to use it!

I want a balcony seat!

 

[SpunkyTheMonkey]

Quote:
tru dat! plus not everyone has hatcheries to order from even if they have the money. i don't here, however, i'm surrounded by places i can buy eggs and pretty much all of them are fertile, only the supermarket ones are (usually) not.

if i explained to the greeks that some of you guys are paying 5 times the normal price plus shipping for eggs which would be mistreated in the post, they'd think it was completely absurd (of course they also don't care what breeds they have either) plus i'm totally into the idea of not having a clue what your going to get in the end...kinda like xmas.

 

[Andora]

Quote:
tru dat! plus not everyone has hatcheries to order from even if they have the money. i don't here, however, i'm surrounded by places i can buy eggs and pretty much all of them are fertile, only the supermarket ones are (usually) not.

if i explained to the greeks that some of you guys are paying 5 times the normal price plus shipping for eggs which would be mistreated in the post, they'd think it was completely absurd (of course they also don't care what breeds they have either) plus i'm totally into the idea of not having a clue what your going to get in the end...kinda like xmas.

I think hatching mutt eggs is kind of like Christmas too. It's so exciting to wait 21 days to see what/who will pop out of the eggs and what traits they will have.

 

[HenMaster]

Tonight will be my seventh day on the Wal-Mart organic eggs and I will post my findings late tonight, we are going to the movie “G-Force”.

Today we went to Whole Foods and I bought two - half dozen eggs marked “organic” from Organic Valley and Vital Farms. Whole Foods did not have any marked “fertile” on any of the containers, I double checked!

I came home and cracked two from each container and all eggs were fertile. Then I got the bright idea to have a ‘control’ test subject so crack two eggs from the eggs we normally buy form Wal-Mart, Sunny Meadow, that I assumed were caged chickens. This was the shocker, they were fertile also.

So for just the eggs marked ‘organic’ from Wal-Mart are not fertile. LOL!

Organic Valley

Vital Farms

Sunny Meadow

If I'm looking at something wrong let me know, I'm not perfict, and neather are you. LOL.
Hen Master

 

[greathorse]

Maybe I am just blind, but I see no evidence of fertility in the lot of them. What are you seeing?

 

[FrenchHen]

This is the link to seeing if an egg is fertile or not.

 

[Cara]

That's a fat deposit, not the blastoderm/blastodisc. That will be an actual spot on the surface of the yolk. White spot = infertile White bullseye = fertile