The Wordless Picture Thread

**outback** · 05-22-2024, 10:27 AM

We get eggs from a lady at church. An array of different colors, but yeah, browns are your best bet. Typically 2-3 are double yolk.

Seen a video of one that when broke open, it was a double yolk, with a shelled egg inside, too. A bit smaller of course.

But a shelled egg inside a shelled egg that's already a double yolk....insane!

**PaulFLUS** · 05-22-2024, 10:34 AM

If that is common where you are or anywhere it is a genetic abnormality that is being inbred. People do the same thing with all kinds of animals, notably pure bred dogs. That is why so many pure breeds have health problems, because with the desired traits they also have health related problems bred into them.
Its a twin is what it is. They rarely both hatch and when they do at least one usually dies soon after. Mostly neither hatches.

The same (inbreeding) has happened with farm raised turkeys. They are so obese that they have trouble even breeding naturally.

**Aggelos** · 05-22-2024, 10:58 AM

1‰ cannot really be considered rare.
Let's put it that way : if a chicken lays on average 4 eggs a week, 50 weeks a year, it takes five years, which is a pretty low average lifespan to produce 1000 eggs.

Which means every chicken will lay 1 or 2 double yolkers in their lifetimes.

And statistics are weird. There are 365 days in a year, but if you put 23 people in the same room, there is more than 50% chances that two them share a birthday. At 40 persons it's quite guaranteed.

Now, few of us break more than 1000 eggs in their whole lifetime, so the chances to witness one are indeed pretty low. But it's still pretty common at the same time, if you catch my drift.

I won't say that there are no breeding (be it inbreeding) issues at stake, or environmental factors, because we know there are when the same question is asked about humans (the equivalent situation would be heterozygous twins).
It's just IMHO not a question of "we do it better here".

It will happen anyway. Just like twins.

**PaulFLUS** · 05-22-2024, 01:04 PM

Well I'm not really disagreeing with what you just said but i think perspective is everything. 1 in 1000 may not seem rare in terms of statistical data but I bet if you were hunting to survive like a wild preditor and you succeeded 1 time out of every 1000 I bet you'd think that was rare. Same goes if you were a young fellow trying to get a date.

**outback** · 05-22-2024, 01:11 PM

Honestly... I've cracked open close to, if not, two dozen double yolkers in my lifetime. But only a few, from store bought. I try to buy from local farmers, being I worked with quite a few of them. Apple farms, chicken hatchery's, dairy farmers, beef and grain farmers.

I even buy a cow every couple years. Couple thousand up front for cow, processing and vac packed, is way cheaper than what you'd pay in store, per pound.

Last cow cost me $3.32 a pound for 1000 pounds of US FARM RAISED beef, by a 4th generation beef farmer.

Country folk can survive.!

**PaulFLUS** · 05-22-2024, 02:11 PM

It may be that it is more common now than it used to be also. Or it could be that the chickens we raised were less prone to it. Black women are more likely to have multiples than any other race except for "high order," multiples, i.e. triplets or higher. White women have the most of those.

I'm not trying to be cantankerous. It is downright silly to argue about eggs. I just know that we had chickens for 20 years and I only saw a couple of double yolkers. My grandmother always said it was rare and most things you see online say it's rare. Of course we all know that if it's on the internet it HAS to be true right? Even so 1/1000 is pretty rare. Honestly I'm surprised there are that many. What you guys are describing sounds more like 1/200 -1/100. I do still believe there is some genetic warpage involved. Genetics, like statistics do weird things also especially in larger populations. I don't know about anywhere else but where I am there has been this mass resurgence in urban chickens. It's a hipster thing I guess.