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Correct, blood spots and meat spots have nothing to do with whether an egg is fertile or not. The reason you don't see them often in store bought eggs is that commercial eggs are mechanically candled. Those showing meat or blood spots are rendered into other food products instead of being sold whole.
I have two roosters and I rarely see a blood or meat spot.
Thanks for all the info folks! I'm a chicken newbie and my "Ginger" has laid a few eggs with a fair amount of blood on the yolks. Good to know they are edible anyways and that she's ok. She certainly seems happy and healthy. I'll look into Vit. A & K a bit more as well.
Happy to meet all you other chicken-crazy folks! So far we are loving our birds.
Blood and meat spots are common. Not a high percentage but, once you'e cracked enough home-grown eggs open, they aren't all that rare and they're nothing to worry about. perfectly harmless.
But I can understand how they could be a little disconcerting if one is encountering the first one. We can thank the commercial producers who candle and cull such eggs from their supermarket line. But the culls aren't destroyed. The merely go off to the bakeries, or to the processors who produce powdered eggs and the milk cartons of pre-scrambled, and such.
My eggs go into the carton, unwashed, pretty much in the order in which they are laid. Unwashed, ungraded.
I have a friend to whom I give a dozen or so each week. Down to earth fellow, trying to raise his six kids to share that trait with him. He's said it was a revelation to his kids that not all eggs are the same size. and that they're not necessarily clean after being laid. And waht gives with this egg with two yolks???
Blood and meat spots are part of that same reality. Most consumers have just been shielded from it.
So is it alright to eat these eggs with spots? I am a newbie... but a lot of mine have the spots. I only have 5 hens (each one a different breed) and they are 7 months old and have been laying for a couple of months.