eggs
how do you like your eggs?
hard boiled? scrambed? sunny side up? how about over easy? poached? fried?
Chickens, like every other species of bird, have the ability to lay eggs. Eggs serve many purposes: they enable the chicken to produce offspring, they are great food sources, they symbolize life and fertility, and they make great decorations for Easter holidays.
As explained in an an online exhibit from The Exploratorium, the anatomy of an egg consists of many parts:
shell: composed of calcium carbonate and is semi-permeable, allowing air to pass through
outer and inner membranes: provide protection against bacteria
albumen: also known as the egg white, contains a significant amount of protein
air sac: initially small in size, but gradually grows as time passes
chalazae: are located on either side of the yolk and help hold it in place
vitelline membrane: encloses the yolk
yolk: contains all the necessary nutrients for an embryo to thrive.
An EGG-cellent diagram is shown in Figure 29.
Figure 25. World Record Egg. Chris Godfrey, Janurary 4, 2019. Instagram, 2021. Retrieved on November 22, 2021 from https://www.instagram.com/p/BsOGulcndj-/?hl=en
Figure 29. Anatomy Of An Egg. Exploratorium, 2021. Retrieved on November 23, 2021 from https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/eggcomposition.html
Figure 28. How Chickens Make Eggs. Patrick Biggs, 2021. Purina Animal Nutrition, 2021. Retrieved on November 22, 2021 from https://www.purinamills.com/chicken-feed/education/detail/how-do-chickens-lay-eggs-understanding-your-egg-laying-chickens
A chicken can produce one egg every 24-26 hours, with most of the egg's formation occurring at nighttime. The online article "How Do Chickens Lay Eggs? Understanding Your Egg-Laying Chickens" by Purina Animal Nutrition provides a concise explanation of the egg formation process. To describe the process briefly, eggs form from the inside to the outside; the yolk forms first, then the egg white, then the egg's shape, and lastly the egg shell (Biggs, 2021).
In order for a chicken to produce high quality eggs, ample dietary resources must be provided. Egg shells are made up of calcium and if a chicken's diet lacks calcium, then the chicken's body will use calcium within its own bones (Biggs, 2021).
As the demand for eggs increases, so do production rates. According to United Egg Producers, the average laying chicken produced 296 eggs and a total of 96.9 billion eggs were produced in 2020 (United Egg Producers, 2021). But what are people doing with all these eggs? Most of the eggs went into retail and manufacturing, and some were exported. More data is shown below in Figures 26 and 27.
Figure 26. US Laying Rate. United Egg Producers, 2021. Retrieved on November 22, 2021 from https://unitedegg.com/facts-stats/
Figure 27. Utilization Of Eggs. United Egg Producers, 2021. Retrieved on November 22, 2021 from https://unitedegg.com/facts-stats/
Figure 30. Egg Yolk Computer Mouse Meme. Marina Ayano, May 21, 2020. Twitter Inc., 2021. Retrieved on November 22, 2021 from https://twitter.com/even_kei/status/1263474205502423043
The rate at which a chicken lays eggs can be indicative of the chicken's health, as there are many biological factors involved in egg production. Such biological factors include genetics, the endocrine system, physical fitness, and nutrition.
In a review submitted to British Poultry Science, it is mentioned that the gonadotropin-releasing hormone, prolactin, follicle-stimulating hormone, and the luteinizing hormone are all significant endocrine factors in egg production (Du et al, 2020).
A recent study observed chickens that were immunized with LEPR ECD. "LEPR" refers to the receptor for the Leptin hormone and "ECD" refers to the extracellular domain, which is a part of the receptor. The Leptin hormone is responsible for inhibiting hunger and delivering information energy balance and body fat. Researchers noticed that the immunized chickens experienced a negative effect on gene expression for their follicular development, which then led to a decrease in their egg laying (Lei et al, 2020).
Another study experimented with using antimicrobial peptides (AMP) as a dietary supplement, observing a control group of chickens that received no AMP and two test groups of chickens that received 50mg/kg and 100mg/kg of AMP added to their diet. Eggs were collected for 45 days and the experiment's results indicated that AMP supplements increased the chickens' egg laying rate (Chen, 2020).
i have hidden easter eggs throughout the site.
can you find them all?
here is a bonus egg to get you started ----------->
