Why are bird eggs so different: scientists have solved the mystery of the shape of the eggs. Straight eggs, recipe
Many people like to eat scrambled or boiled eggs for breakfast. But few people think that eggs can have strange shapes and sizes.
City residents rarely visit the farm, but buy fresh organic eggs in the store. Therefore, they were unlikely to encounter oddly shaped eggs.
Some look like they came out of a sci-fi movie!
It's a great reminder that nature can always surprise us. Look at these strangely shaped and sized eggs that people have found in ordinary chicken coops. It’s hard to believe, but an ordinary chicken can carry THIS!
Soft shell egg
Instead of the usual hard shell, they only have a soft membrane that holds the white and yolk inside.
Such an egg can be laid by a very old or very young chicken. It can also happen when the bird is stressed or lacks calcium and vitamin D.
An egg with a soft shell and... a “tail”
This usually happens when an egg gets stuck during laying. Thus, excess pressure is created on it and as a result this very strange appendage is formed.
Egg with a crack
This happens if the egg breaks before the hen lays it. It soon re-calcifies along the crack.
Irregularly shaped egg
This occurs when an egg gets stuck during laying. However, the shell still hardens, but the shape of the egg turns out to be very unusual.
Egg with pimples
This slight drawback is due to the fact that calcium is added to the birds' diet. These growths can vary in size and texture depending on the bird.
Blue or green eggs
Some chicken breeds lay blue eggs. These are Ameraucana, Araucana and Legbar. The green tint occurs when a chicken that lays blue eggs is crossed with one that lays brown eggs.
Very small eggs
These tiny eggs don't even have a yolk. Most often, such an egg is a single failure, which is not an indicator of serious health problems in the chicken.
An egg inside another egg
Farmers encounter this strange phenomenon from time to time.
This phenomenon is associated with peristalsis and occurs when a hen begins to lay a second egg before the first one has been laid.
Egg with several yolks
Experts believe that this product is a deviation from the norm and is a consequence of disturbances in the nutrition and maintenance of laying hens. Nevertheless, such eggs are in great demand.
Wrinkled egg
They are different from soft shell eggs because these “wrinkles” are hardened. A chicken that has had avian infectious bronchitis can lay such an egg.
Egg with faded shell
According to research from the University of Florida, the two main factors in the decline of brown shell pigmentation are stress and age of the birds.
Perfectly round eggs
This incredibly rare occurrence can net the owner of the chicken a decent amount of money. Thus, a British woman managed to sell a perfectly round chicken egg for more than $600!
From: www.littlethings.com
Incredible facts
If you have a sense of humor, you are interested in many things, and therefore you are a fan of asking questions. And if you are also a good cook, has the question ever occurred to you: why is the egg of this particular shape?
First of all, what is a chicken egg? After all, its shape is not just round or spherical, like most reptile eggs. It's also not an oval. The shape of the egg is an asymmetrical mixture of an oval and a cone, with one of its sides larger and wider than the other.
If the eggs were rectangular or square, they would be too hard at the corners but too soft in the middle, which would create an understandable inconvenience when the hen laid eggs. The strongest form that can be is a ball or sphere. But if the egg were one of these two forms, then it would be enough to give it a gentle push, and it would roll far, far away.
So one of the reasons that eggs have an asymmetrical oval and cone shape is that even if you push it, it will come back to you. For some time it will spin with its pointed end and slowly stop with this very pointed side. In fact, the eggs of birds that nest on rocks are more oval than those that nest on the ground. This means that the "more-oval" eggs of cliff-nesting birds will roll very slowly and tightly. This means there is a small chance that it will not roll out of its nest or fall off a cliff. Nature initially provided for many things, including such safety measures.
The second reason that the eggs should be exactly this shape is that thanks to it (the shape) the eggs are in fairly close contact with each other in the nest, and there is only a small air space between them. Thus, the eggs do not have time to cool down and remain warm all the time. And, of course, thanks to this shape, as many eggs as possible can fit into the nest.
And, of course, if the egg were of a different shape, it is difficult to imagine how a chicken could lay it. Surprisingly, it seems wrong and extremely inconvenient that the egg comes out first with a blunt end and then with a conical end. According to all the laws of physics, this is how it should be.
The easiest way to explain is with an example. When you eat a cherry, you find a pit inside. This bone is not round, it has a canonical shape on all sides. Many people are familiar with such fun as shooting bones from childhood. To do this, it was enough to squeeze the cherry between your fingers, and the pit would easily fly out of the cherry over a fairly long distance. And all this is due to the fact that the bone is cone-shaped. If it were rectangular, it would hardly be possible to shoot bones so easily.
Returning to the egg shape, it is ideal for the hen to lay it as painlessly as possible. The chicken's vagina is tube-shaped. By contracting, the muscles push the egg forward with its blunt end. This allows the bird to avoid ruptures.
Finally, Professor Lopez-Martinez and Vicence from the Universities of Madrid and Barcelona studied eggs found in the Pyrenees. According to scientists, they are more than seventy thousand years old. They are concerned with the question of who these eggs belong to, were they laid by birds or dinosaurs? Scientists compared dinosaur eggs and modern bird eggs. The results revealed that dinosaur eggs tend to be longer and less rounded than bird eggs. Remarkably, dinosaur eggs also tended to be more symmetrical, with less difference between the blunt and pointed ends. This means that scientists’ guess that the eggs found in the Pyrenees belong to dinosaurs is correct.
Or maybe the eggs are shaped so that they are easier to place in the cells of a specially designed egg carton and easier to store in the refrigerator? Today, scientists are studying another semi-comic question, which, nevertheless, is very important for modern science: What came first: the egg or the chicken?
Soft-shelled eggs, small eggs without a yolk, eggs with deformed or speckled shells. Quite often I get asked questions (and sent all sorts of creepy photos to my email address) about the reasons for the appearance of unusual eggs in chickens - with bumps, tubercles, with small spots, speckled, in a soft shell. In most cases, this is not a cause for concern.
Although it is often customary to judge the health status of chickens by the appearance of eggs - healthy birds eat healthy, balanced food and lay the same eggs of the usual regular shape, sometimes abnormal eggs that appear can be considered a completely normal phenomenon. You should only worry if this happens constantly, as the cause may lie in serious health problems.
So I decided to describe some of the most typical and harmless types of abnormal chicken eggs.
Small eggs without yolk
These are eggs the size of a small ball and are often found in young laying hens. The reason they appear is that the shell is formed around an egg without a yolk and surrounds only the white, which is why the size of the eggs is so small. This is a fairly common occurrence among young laying hens until their bodies reach sexual maturity. It is better to eat such eggs rather than try to hatch chicks from them - even if they have a yolk inside, the space inside the shell is too small for the normal development of the embryo.
Double Yolk Eggs
When two yolks are too close to each other in the oviduct, they are sometimes covered by the same white (and shell) at the same time, resulting in a fairly large egg. In general, a double yolk in an egg is not a cause for concern, so if your chicken regularly lays such eggs, I would simply turn a blind eye to it if I were you. This does not pose any potential danger to the health of chickens; in addition, eggs with a double yolk are an excellent food product.
Speckled eggs
As the egg moves through the oviduct, it turns. If the rotation is too fast, the egg may have a smudged pattern. If the egg moves slowly, then small inclusions of pigment appear on it. Many (especially Welzumer) regularly lay speckled eggs. These are one of the most beautiful types of eggs, and they look great on the dinner table.
Eggs with white deposits on the shell
Small white particles on eggs are nothing more than calcium deposits. If there are various kinds of particles in the oviduct from which the shell is formed, then calcium begins to be released to bind them. This causes white deposits to form on the shell. They can be easily peeled off with a fingernail, after which the eggs can be eaten.
Eggs with wrinkled or ridged shells
The appearance of such eggs is quite common for more experienced ones. This can be caused by stress during egg laying due to a loud barking dog, a lurking predator, thunderstorms, or other stimuli. Although from an aesthetic point of view such eggs cannot be called beautiful, they can be successfully eaten.
Soft shell eggs
As a rule, such eggs appear due to a lack of calcium in the diet, although there may be other reasons, for example, an excess of spinach in the feed. I would not take the risk of eating such soft-shelled eggs, since they lack the first line of defense against bacteria that gets inside the egg - the shell.
Eggs without shell
The only exception to the list of safe unusual types of eggs may be eggs without shells. You may have heard about them. I have been breeding chickens for seven years and have never encountered such a problem. But I do know that this is not a death sentence for a chicken, as you may have heard or read somewhere.
However, eating such eggs is dangerous.
They're not actually real eggs—they're a soft, rubbery mass that a hen sometimes lays toward the end of her cycle. According to many poultry experts, these so-called eggs are actually part of a reproductive system that has gone awry. As a result, they are excreted from the body through the oviduct.
As a rule, after the appearance of such eggs, chickens no longer lay eggs.
Unusual eggs are usually a random occurrence and nothing to worry about. However, it is still better to familiarize yourself with useful information... just to be on the safe side.
Video about feeding chickens correctly to stop egg pecking
E These not so simple equations were derived by the English researcher T.K. Carter. They describe a well-known and seemingly simple thing - a chicken egg. Using the first equation, you can construct a closed curve that is close to an ellipse and corresponds to the outline of the egg, and the second equation allows you to calculate the surface of the egg. From the first, basic equation, one can derive a formula that determines the volume of an egg. Carter tested his equations by taking a series of measurements of the volume of chicken eggs by measuring the volume of water displaced by the egg from a vessel, and then compared the results with the calculated values. The coincidence turned out to be accurate: the mathematical model determined the real shape of the egg with great accuracy. However, these formulas cannot explain why the egg has this particular shape. Moreover, it should be noted that not all birds have eggs that look like chicken eggs. Thus, the eggs of an eagle owl or kite are almost spherical, while those of a sandpiper or thin-billed guillemot are closer to a cone. The shape of an already laid egg does not change. Moreover, eggs of the same bird species can have different shapes, but within narrow limits. For example, young females lay oblong eggs, and with age, eggs become more rounded.
A Ristotle believed that more pointed eggs hatch into cockerels, and rounded eggs hatch into hens. At the beginning of the 19th century, naturalists proposed a hypothesis according to which the outline of the egg roughly corresponds to the body shape of the bird that develops from it. They are echoed by modern designers, saying that an egg is an ideal example of a container, maximally adapted to its contents. Proponents of natural selection argue that the eggs of various species of birds have a shape that is most favorable for survival in environmental conditions. Thus, the eggs of some birds nesting on rock ledges have a shape close to pear-shaped. If such an egg is slightly pushed, it will not roll in a straight line, but will describe a circle. Thus, he is less likely to be thrown off a cliff by a gust of wind or by a not-too-careful mother. It should be noted that guillemots may have eggs of a different shape, but this is kept silent.
E As early as 1772, the German ornithologist Gunther argued that the outline of the egg is the result of pressure exerted on it by the muscles of the oviduct where it is formed. In general, his statement is considered true even now. Initially, the egg exists in the form of an oocyte located in the ovary of a chicken (a chicken has only one ovary). This oocyte - the rudiment of the egg - will later become the yolk. Oocytes, which are at various stages of development, usually mature in laying hens one per day. Sometimes it happens that two oocytes mature at the same time, then the egg will have two yolks. The formation of the egg itself occurs in the oviduct. The chicken also has one. More precisely, the embryo first develops two ovaries and an oviduct, but the right ones regress during further embryonic development and only the left ones remain. This is typical for many birds.
ABOUT Having freed itself from the follicle, the oocyte enters a kind of funnel - the beginning of the oviduct, and then into the oviduct, where its fertilization and further development occur. The walls of the oviduct produce albumin, which makes up the egg white, a process that lasts about four hours. Surrounding the yolk, a thin but dense layer of the protein shell forms spirally convoluted chalaza strands; they keep the yolk in the center of the egg. The egg, now supplied with protein, continues on its way. Two shells are formed around the protein. At first they are firmly connected, then separated. Finally, the egg enters the uterus. At this point, the shells are weakened and seem to “float” around the protein. Over the next five hours, water and salts gradually penetrate through the shells until they stretch again and the egg “swells.” This preliminary process is necessary for the calcination of the shell, which occurs over the next 15-16 hours.
WITH The shell consists mainly of calcite - crystals of calcium carbonate. It is three-layered: the inner layer, which makes up a third of the thickness of the shell, consists of conical crystals held together by protein bridges, the next layer consists of columnar crystals of calcium carbonate closely pressed together. All this is covered with a thin skin (cuticle), which is formed immediately before the egg is laid. If the egg were not exposed to external forces while it was still elastic, it would tend to be spherical. These external forces are of muscular origin. The walls of the oviduct have two layers of muscles: the inner one, with circular muscles, pushes the egg to the oviduct, and the outer one, consisting of longitudinal muscles, serves to facilitate the passage of the egg. Depending on how stretched the oviduct is, the egg will encounter more or less resistance on its way and will be more or less elongated. The fact that one end of the egg is more rounded and the other more pointed is certainly associated with the asymmetry of the forces acting on it, however, how this happens is unclear, but it is known for sure that the egg moves and comes out, as a rule, with the blunt end forward , not spicy.
U In many bird species, eggs are colored due to the deposition of pigments in the shell. There is a misconception in popular literature that eggs hidden from prying eyes in hollows or burrows do not need protective coloring. That is, the cause (shell color) and effect (nesting method) change places. Due to objective reasons, birds cannot influence the color of the shell of their eggs, but through trial and error they are able to place or design their nest in such a way as to successfully leave offspring. In other words, the color of egg shells directly or indirectly influenced the methods of nesting and nest building in birds and, accordingly, the survival of the species Egg-shell paint of birds and natural selection.
- N.N. Balatsky.- Berkut. 3(1). 1994. The origin of the egg paint is discussed. It is supposed that the egg-shell paint is primary. It determines the type of nesting: birds with the good visible eggs nest closed. Species that have eggs with camouflage paint of shell can nest open. The survival strategy of a species consists in the dispersion of eggs or nests and in the diversity nest constructions for the protection of clutches and nestlings.
");" onmouseout="return nd();" href="../Publications/41_p.htm">(Balatsky, 1994) .
F Orma is not the only mystery of the egg. Here's another one: where do birds get calcium for their shells? On average, a chicken egg shell weighs 5 grams, of which 2 grams are calcium. Shell formation takes 16 hours, and thus the chicken's body must produce 125 milligrams of calcium per hour. But the total amount of calcium circulating in a chicken's blood is approximately 25 milligrams. Where does a chicken get the rest of the calcium it needs? Apparently from food. But it is not difficult to prove that a chicken, whatever its diet, is not capable of moving calcium from its digestive apparatus into the blood, and from there to the developing egg at such a rapid pace as is necessary for the formation of the shell. This means that if she does not use calcium directly from her body, her situation will be difficult. And then the chicken turns to the additional calcium reserve located in its skeleton. We are talking about the secondary skeletal system. These are thin bone fragments that develop in the middle cavities of most of her bones. At the time of calcification of the shell, these reserve seeds are dissolved, releasing calcium, which is used to build the shell, and phosphates, which are released in the urine. Through this process, a chicken can mobilize up to 10 percent of its bone matter in less than a day. This phenomenon is surprising, but not unique: all birds studied in this regard have similar capabilities. Spare bones in birds must have developed during evolution simultaneously with the appearance of eggs in a dense calcified shell. They are found only in females during the reproductive period and are never found in males.
E Another equally interesting question: how does an embryo breathe through the shell? His life will be impossible if he does not receive oxygen from outside and emit carbon dioxide. Moreover, the embryo must emit water vapor. During development, the embryo absorbs yolk fats, and as a result of metabolism, water is formed from them. And if some of this water is not expelled through the shell, the chick will simply drown. Gas exchange occurs through microscopic pores between calcite crystals that form the shell and are not perfectly tightly connected to each other. The intensity of gas exchange depends on the number of pores, their average size, shell thickness and incubation duration.
L It is curious that in all birds the amount of water lost during incubation is always equal to approximately 15 percent of the initial mass of the egg. But the eggs of different birds are extremely diverse both in size and in the content of protein and yolk, and the duration of incubation also varies. Thus, the mass of eggs can vary from 300 milligrams (hummingbirds) to 9 kilograms (the recently disappeared Madagascan apiornis). The incubation period can last from 11 to 80 days. The proportion of yolk in an egg can range from 14 to 67 percent. And with all this, the “15 percent rule” always remains in force.
TO How is this constancy achieved? In each case in its own way. For example, petrel eggs are similar to chicken eggs - both in size and in the thickness of the shell. But the incubation period for the petrel lasts 52 days, and for the chicken only 21. It would seem that the loss of water in the petrel should be greater. However, this does not happen: the number of pores in the shell is much smaller - 3700 versus 12400 in chickens. Birds that live at high altitudes, where water loss must be greater due to low atmospheric pressure, lay eggs whose shells have fewer pores than those that live at sea level.
R Regulation of water loss during the incubation period also depends on the humidity of the nest. Experiments have shown that the relative humidity of the nest is always higher than the humidity of the surrounding air and is approximately the same for a wide variety of birds. Doesn't this mean that birds have a “hygrometer” and know how to ventilate the nest in order to constantly maintain the necessary microclimate in it, no matter what the temperature and humidity outside? In any case, biologists have not yet revealed all the mysteries of such an ordinary phenomenon as an egg.
When you cut an ordinary egg, you get slices of different sizes, and they also crumble: the white is separate, the yolk is separate, aesthetic feelings are in hysterics. To satisfy the thirst for beauty and make eating more convenient, Denmark came up with the idea of producing straight eggs.
Watch the full video, and we have broken it down into screenshots and explained how it works.
Usually a boiled egg looks like this
But not in Denmark. Here is a typical Danish boiled egg. It's long
A typical Danish city dweller seems to ask: "WTF?" He has not been to the village and does not know that chickens lay eggs of different shapes and lengths.
These eggs are laid by a special breed of chicken that has the feet of an ostrich. This is the creation of Danish geneticists who fed GMO birds
Joke. In fact, everything is simpler - they are cooked in a special way at the egg lengthening plant in the Danish city
First, take regular oval eggs
Break them down
Separate yolks from whites
Yolks and whites are poured into different containers
The whites are boiled in oblong molds, inserting a tube inside to create a hole into which the yolk will then be poured.
When the white is cooked, add the yolk inside and cook everything together.
Straight eggs are ready
All that's left to do is pack it
Ideally shaped slices will reach the table
Foods with strange shapes, sizes and tastes are not necessarily the result of genetic experiments. Most likely, marketers and chefs tried to surprise customers. And they succeeded.
