Average egg weight

[DaveEllon]

For those with digital scales (only 5 quid on Ebay) reading to a gram I'm interested to know what people's experience is of egg weights. My three chucks are just generic brown ex battery farm girlies. The farmer said his average egg from 11,000 of them was 57 grams. With a free range lifestyle and lots of lovely fresh things to eat mine now lay eggs that are just over 70g on average. That's nearly a quarter bigger than a battery farm egg. In fact when Clare was on her own before I got the newest two last month hers were about 80g but since the new arrivals came Clare's eggs have reduced in size a bit such that all three now lay eggs about the same size. It's almost like they've sort of synchronised themselves.

You can just fit them into a std egg box but it's a squeeze. They've also now settled to a really reliable one a day each. Now what I'm thinking is why do battery farms replace them after a year if they can still lay an egg a day every day when they're looked after right? And if the free range eggs are so much bigger than battery ones, and therefore worth more, isn't it better to treat them right, get bigger eggs, longer living and still productive chickens, nicer tasting eggs, not ending up with chickens pecked bare and living in squalor, not having to replace them every year at great expense?

OK, too many thoughts. But my little girls are now so gorgeous with all their lost feathers regrown, so damn big too, like bloody turkeys almost compared with the wretches I bought last month, so happy and friendly. They actually do seem to adore me although I doubt much goes on in their tiny brains. They know that letting out time each morning means a treat of a slice of bread at the back door, they call back to me when they're hidden in the shrubbery and I call out when I'm trying to find them, they follow me about when I'm gardening and if I so much as open the back door a crack they're in like rockets because they know that it's somewhere inside the house that the lovely tasty bread is hidden. Little so and so's. I love 'em to bits.

[Mo]

Well I've found that the eggs get bigger with age. When they first start they are funny little 'pullets eggs', some tiny, all small. Gradually getting bigger as they get into their stride. Then older hens lay really big eggs.
But battery hens are bred to lay regularly and their shell mechanism can't keep up. So older hens sometimes lay eggs with thinner shells. They even have to stretch the shell over a bigger egg.
For us that usually doesn't matter - we carry the eggs gently into the kitchen and use them. But they wouldn't stand up to the packing factory and travelling, or look good in the box.
And sometimes if the shell is really thin or non-existent (just a membrane) it can make the hen quite ill until it is laid.
So farmers get rid of potential problems. If an egg breaks on the conveyor belt all the eggs would be contaminated and according to the regulations could not be sold as whole eggs.

Also not all older hens lay regularly, but they still cost as much to feed, and take up space in the expensive buildings.
If you cost it out you will have spent most on your coop & run, and 2 sacks of feed cost more than most Point-of-Lay hens.

[bikesandbirdsbob]

My eggs weigh 6eggs 1 pound....
Bob