Trader Joes & Other Grocery Store Egg Hatching Club - Are you a Member

[ronott1]

Hi All,

I just picked up 2 dozen Cage free, organic eggs from TJs. They don't say "FERTILE" but I didn't see any that did. I cracked open 2. The brown egg was infertile. The white looked like it had started to develop. Am I wrong in thinking that?



Do you think there is any chance of these hatching?

Thanks!!

That is where the chalazae connects the shell to the yolk. The embryo is likely on the other side. The chalazae is what breaks in an egg with a detached air cell.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Hi All,

I just picked up 2 dozen Cage free, organic eggs from TJs. They don't say "FERTILE" but I didn't see any that did. I cracked open 2. The brown egg was infertile. The white looked like it had started to develop. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Do you think there is any chance of these hatching?

Thanks!!

The fertile Trader Joe's eggs do say "fertile" right on the carton. The first egg shows the germinal disk and it is not a bulls eye so not fertile. The section be photo shows the chalaza, not the germinal disk. The yolk has a chalaza on each side to sort of anchor the yolk in place. The germinal disk was probably on the other side (bottom). Cage free means that the chickens are loose in a big chicken house, much like a broiler house with egg bixes in the center facing both walls with a conveyor belt in the middle that takes the eggs from both sides and sends them out to be boxed up. I don't know if they vent sex or what but they certainly try to put only hens in a layer house and probably go through periodically to remove dead birds and certainly remove any roosters that were missed. I've walked through a broiler house with a farmer who had no qualms about killing any birds with bad legs, crooked beaks, wry neck, star-gazers, etc. so I can't imagine a rooster would be allowed to run around eating valuable food for long. The chances of even one rooster in a layer house of 20,000 hens seems small. The chances of a rooster in a cage-free layer house would be greater than in a caged layer house but not by much. With the fertile eggs they have specifically and intentionally added roosters to mate with the hens.

 

[wabbit1964]

Every now and then I think about doing this as an experiment. I very rarely get to Trader Joes or Whole Foods but now may have to put this on my 'bucket list' to do this year. I currently have my incubator full but I am going to have to try this!

 

[ronott1]

Every now and then I think about doing this as an experiment. I very rarely get to Trader Joes or Whole Foods but now may have to put this on my 'bucket list' to do this year. I currently have my incubator full but I am going to have to try this!

Post if you find eggs labeled as fertile in Maine!

 

[SpringPeeper]

I am going to do another carton.

 

[Dubrovnik]

I did some searching to find out what brands of grocery store eggs might be fertile.

Rock Island (brown eggs which hatch Red Star chicks) sold at Lucky's, Safeway, Whole Foods and many other stores. These eggs are produced in Petaluma, California.

Nutrifresh (white eggs which hatch white leghorns), sold at Trader Joe's and produced in Chino Valley, California.
There's also a TJ brand that hatches California Whites, the eggs are cream colored.

Barnstar Free Roaming Fertile Eggs, produced by NuCal, (which also produces Eggland's Best.) Sold at Raley's.

There are also local fertile brands such as Marin Sun, Lazy 69, Clark Summit, Eatwell, Sinclair Farms, Alexandre Kids, and Burroughs Farm.

Some BYCers have advised buying free-range eggs that are not labeled fertile, on the off chance that there might be roosters in such an environment.
Don't bother purchasing Vital Farms eggs with this in mind; they admit that they have no roosters.

 

[Peep_Show]

Today was the biggest egg yet from TeJae, the TJ's hen: 2.83 oz
(Jumbo is 2.5 and above)
TeJae is my smallest hen!

Pictured with an EE egg (2.25 oz -- X-Large) and a Welsummer egg (2.28 oz -- X-Large)

 

[ronott1]

Today was the biggest egg yet from TeJae, the TJ's hen: 2.83 oz
(Jumbo is 2.5 and above)
TeJae is my smallest hen!

Pictured with an EE egg (2.25 oz -- X-Large) and a Welsummer egg (2.28 oz -- X-Large)

That is a nice egg!

 

[Dubrovnik]

I just found another grocery store source for fertile eggs in Sonoma county, California.

It is Community Market, an organic store in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa. They have a brand of fertile eggs called Red Rose Half Acre, from a farm in Windsor, 20 miles or so from Santa Rosa. These fertile eggs cost $8.99 a dozen, and the colors are varied. The carton I got had a blue-white one, a tinted one, an olive one, three greens and the rest were brown. When I candled them, I found only a few porous shells, and the air cells were unruptured, not rolling, and nickel-sized. The Julian date on them was 088, so they're a little over a week old.

The Whole Foods store at Coddingtown in Santa Rosa has Alexandre Kids brown eggs, rumored to be fertile, coming from Corning, CA. When I looked them over, I couldn't tell them from any other carton of pale brown eggs. (Probably will hatch Red Stars.)

There are some shipped Ameraucana eggs coming to me in a few days, and I plan to incubate my Red Rose and Rock Island eggs with them, and post about hatch rates here.

 

[wabbit1964]

Well today I ventured out and went to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and neither has 'fertile' eggs for sale here in Maine. I am tempted to just try some of their eggs in the incubator anyway even if they don't say fertile just for fun.