Double Yolker Eggs!

Julia_Jaffa

:beer: There is superb butchers in Bury St Edmunds called Mr Edis (I strongly advise trying their best sausages if you are passing) where I purchased a dozen eggs and to my utter amazement all were double yokers. My astonishment and delight built into almost orgasmic proportions upon cracking them open, alas it was an experience as yet unrepeated. A double yoker is indeed a double blessing, wishing you all double happiness!:beer:

jobbingmusician

lady_fuschia wrote:

Is it possible to get triple yolkers? Now THAT would be impressive!

My theory is - NO! This is because I posit that double yolkers should be formed by cell division - so you can have double, quadruple, octuple etc but not a number of yolks which is not a power of 2.

Humans can have identical triplets only when one of quadruplets is unviable. In the case of yolks, the eggs should be unfertilised so there is no question of unviability.

Am I right, you scientists out there?

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i get double yolers quite regular from my chickens.....its only two that lay double yolkers...and they dont lay every day....so i dont know if thats got anything to do with it....and the eggs are a lot biggers. so you can tell which ones they are straight away......
i have also had a double yolker in a duck egg once.....as well

barrwalk

I used to raise free range chickens and sell the eggs. When the young hens are coming into lay they seem to take some time to settle down into a routine and that was when we had double yolk eggs.
You could see the difference in the larger size of the double yolkers.
I suspect they have been banned by The European Union regulations like most of our happy memories and will certainly be sorted out on their non-standard size which modern machines would find it hard to cope with.
They may even have been selectively bred out as the young hens would have struggled passing an egg of that size.

livinginhope

I always buy double yolkers from our local market,they are sold on bigs trays of 2 dozen for 2.50,how they know they are double yolkers I don't know,but only ever had one that wasn't,next time I bought eggs I jokingly said about one not being a double yolker and he gave me a free tray!
One question I would like answered is that if the average egg has 90 calories,does a double yolker have 180? I've been counting them as 90,maybe that's why weight not coming off he he.

feijoa

I used to wonder if a double-yolker egg, if fertilised, would hatch into twin chicks. So I took the opportunity to ask a vet who was giving a talk on his work at our village hall this very question. He looked at me as if I were something revolting that he'd just trodden in! Nothing daunted, I asked the same question some time later on a radio phone-in program - and the answer is YES!! A biologist said that, in some bird species, twinning of this sort is not unknown, although the survival rates of the hatched chicks are not high. They tend to be smaller than singletons - not surprising really, as there is not much chance to grow to full size within a rigid eggshell! Also, the y may die in the eggshell before due hatching date - again, due to lack of space and nutrients. So I felt that maybe it was not me who was the complete idiot here after all!! Hooray!!

d.o.o.g

I'm not sure about this business of it all being down to luck. My mother in law lives in Penrith nr. the Lake District and her local butcher sells eggs which are always doubles. He doesn't advertise them as such and I'm not sure he even knows, but they are ALL, ALWAYS doubles. It's one of the highlights of my trips to the in-laws

jcr16

i have never had a double yoker egg. i thought the only way of getting them was to cook two eggs at same time and let them join. i don't think i can afford to buy them all the time but next time i cook a special meal like gammon and egg then i will try and buy them for this.
livinghope thats a real bargin 2 dozen eggs for £2.50. if somewhere close to me sold them that cheap i'd buy them all the time.

Edinburghlass_2

d.o.o.g wrote:

I'm not sure about this business of it all being down to luck. My mother in law lives in Penrith nr. the Lake District and her local butcher sells eggs which are always doubles. He doesn't advertise them as such and I'm not sure he even knows, but they are ALL, ALWAYS doubles. It's one of the highlights of my trips to the in-laws

Certainly not luck as when I have bought them they are advertised as double yolk eggs

From this website http://ulisse.cas.psu.edu/pa4h/embryoquestion.html

is the following...

2. What is a double-yolked egg?

It is an egg which has two yolks in it. Both yolks were ovulated (released) at or about the same time and enclosed in the same shell. Many eggs with double yolks occur when young adult female chickens first start producing eggs. Their egg-forming organs are not adjusted or not yet synchronized, so two yolks are released together. Shortly after egg production starts, the chickens' bodies adjust, and for the most part, they then lay eggs with only one yolk. But, there are some chickens which inherit the characteristic to lay double-yolked eggs and usually continue to do so throughout their life.

coolagarry

I agree with jenniferpa. Its the young chickens that tend to lay double yokers. They haven't quite got the hang of what size eggs to produce so produce them too big (ouch) and a fair number are doubles.
They soon settle down to laying 'normal' size eggs.

I buy my eggs from a local free-range farm (a 'seconds' tray (30 eggs) for £1.25).
The normal thing with them is that when one of the sheds (8,000 chickens) drops below producing a certain number of eggs the chickens go for freezing and are replaced with a whole shed of young chickens who produce a lot of double yokers until they get the hang of it .