Fake Eggs? Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Chicken Eggs 

There seems to be a lot of debate about which is better, white eggs or brown, and depending where you are you are likely to get all sorts of answers. For example, some farmers believe the dark brown an egg is means it tastes better. In Uganda, four unscrupulous Chinese business men in October, 2018 were hunted after an alarming discovery of selling fake eggs to the Uganda market. It was even published how the fake egg looks like compared to a real egg.  

To identify fake eggs from real ones, here are a few tips; 

• Real eggs have a faint smell which fake eggs lack. 

• Tapping a fake egg makes a hollower sound than a real egg. 
• Once a fake egg is cracked open, egg white and yolk would quickly mix. In fake eggs, the egg yolk and egg white tend to mix almost instantaneously when the egg is cracked open, while in genuine eggs, the egg yolk will stay apart from the egg white for a longer time. 
• Fake eggs yolk appears more yellow and has chalaze, which is the white string that holds the yolk. 
• Fake eggs sound watery when you shake it because the chemicals inside do not solidify together. 
• When you break the egg and keep it for some time, the egg white and the yolk will soon mix with one another, since they are essentially made from the same ingredients. The fake eggs do not stink even if cooked and kept in the open for days, and do not attract ants or flies. When you fry a fake egg, the yolk will be spread without being touched unlike a real egg 

So what is the difference between white and brown real eggs? It basically comes down to breed. Some chickens lay brown eggs, some lay white eggs, but it goes deeper than that. Breeds that lay white eggs tend be leaner breeds that handle extreme heat very well (The hens thrive well in mostly semi-arid and hot places nearer to the Equator) whereas brown egg layers tend to be very large with thick feathering making them more suitable to extreme cold and more susceptible to heat stroke. Hens that are bred inn central Uganda have more white eggs.  

The brown egg laying chicken 

There are different types of the brown egg laying chicken and these include the Gold Line, Lehman Brown, and Isa brown among others. These lay eggs which have a brown outer shell and they are larger than other chicken and it should be noted that they eat more food than the other chicken. 

The white egg laying chicken 

These include the Isa white, Harvard white, sever white and Bovanch white. These are relatively small as compared to the brown egg laying chicken and they eat considerably less too. They lay eggs with a white shell. 

Yolk Color 

The color of an egg yolk should usually be very bright yellow or a deep orange. The difference in color is based on what the chicken is eating. Chickens who only eat the grain feed given to them will lay eggs that are yellow. Chickens that are free range and eat mostly bugs and vegetation will produce these orange yolks. There may be nutritional differences but I couldn’t definitively tell you what they are. 

A bright yellow or deep orange yolk proves it an authentic real egg 

Fertile or Infertile? 

Many people think that you need a rooster for a hen to lay eggs. This just isn’t so. In fact, most of the eggs you buy at the grocery store (unless otherwise labelled) are in fact infertile. If there’s no reason for a commercial egg farmer to have roosters they won’t bother. Most of the hens producing eggs today will have never seen a rooster in their life. 

However, I know some people buy their eggs from farmer’s markets or directly from the farm. How can you tell if those are fertile? It’s really quite easy. Once you crack an egg open look for a white spot on the yolk. If you can’t see it use a spoon to roll the yolk around until you can. If the white spot looks like a dot it is an infertile egg. If the white spot looks more like a doughnut or bulls eye it is fertile.

You may ask why you’d want a fertile egg. The answer is pretty simple. People who raise chickens often prefer raising their own instead of buying new chicks every couple of years so they keep a rooster around. However every egg is not going to be wanted for hatching, instead the extras are sold to be eaten. In the meanwhile the rooster will keep the hens happy and might even defend them from predators. Some people claim fertile eggs taste better. This appears to be a matter of opinion. 

Does size mean anything? 

In the stores you can usually find small, medium, large, and jumbo or extra-large eggs. You might wonder why this is. Some may speculate this has to do with breed but in the commercial industry this usually has more to do with a hen’s age. The older the hen the more likely she is to produce these larger eggs. In fact, some breeds like the Rhode Island Red are so notorious for this that once they start producing eggs too big for sale they’re slaughtered for meat. The largest chicken egg on record was over 7 ounces in weight! 

How can you tell if an egg is fresh? 

It’s a bit disturbing to know that some eggs are sitting on a shelf somewhere for up to six weeks before someone buys them. So how can you tell if an egg is fresh? 

Easy. If you put an egg in a bowl of water and it sinks to the bottom and lays on its side than it is as fresh as you can get it. If it sinks but stands on its end then it is still fresh enough to eat but it is getting older. If it floats to the top of the water its an old egg. Sadly most of the eggs I bought at the grocery store were this way until I invested in my own laying hens. I can profess the fresher the egg the tastier they are! 

There are also other ways to tell if an eggs is fresh. For instance if the shell seems unusually thick than it is fresh. If the yolk stands really tall after you’ve cracked the egg it is fresh. If the yolk has wrinkles or dissolves into a puddle when you crack it open than it is an old egg. 

How many eggs does one hen produce? 

This is a loaded question. Most of the breeds used in the commercial egg industry start laying eggs when they are 4-5 months old. These breeds tend to lay an egg every other day, sometimes an egg every day, but this doesn’t last long. In fact when the hen reaches two years of age her “peak productivity” will be lost and unless she’s someone’s pet on a small farm she’ll likely be slaughtered for meat and replaced by a pullet (a hen under a year of age). If allowed to live she’ll still produce eggs, just not as many, until she becomes truly elderly at which point she’ll stop altogether, sometimes as young as three, sometimes as old as five or more. Most hens generally live to be around five years old although some have made it into their teens. Since no one is breeding specifically for longer lived chickens this seems to be the result of pure chance. 

With all that being said there are many breeds of chickens bred for all sorts of purposes. Some are ornamental and win shows for their beauty, others are raised purely for meat