What do with the egg?

[james78]

Well, I certainly learned a lot today about eggs, fertilization and hatching. The last few posts clarified everything. Thanks are lot for your replies!

 

[mortie]

I mean to be clear, I can understand a person being a little squeamish about eating a fertile chicken egg...but most people don't understand how that works. Crack one into a frying pan and the average person wouldn't know the difference. Folks that buy farm fresh eggs are probably eating fertile eggs all the time without even knowing it. They're really no different.

Unless they're incubated. Room temp won't do it. Eggs can sit for weeks at room temp and be fine (unless it's well over 90 degrees I suppose). Even if your niece's parents decided they wanted to incubate that egg, head over to the incubating section and see how complex that process is....it boggled my mind the first time I decided to hatch some eggs. It's not as simple as it sounds.

If they're not going to eat it or pass it on to someone who will eat it (the fact that it sat at room temp for a couple days shouldn't make a difference, really unless it's really warm there) then just toss. The farm has plenty of their own eggs and the effort to get it back to the farm (where they will likely eat it or feed it to animals) is just not worth it. It would be completely different if we were talking about a live chick, but this hasn't even *started* to develop so it's just an egg.

If you're curious, and I often am curious to learn about new things, I'd check out the hatching area of the site to see just what is involved in incubating. It's a very fascinating process!

 

[Rooster14250]

The fertilized egg vs the unfertilized egg has no taste difference that I can find. If you don't want to eat the egg though, just throw it out.