Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask if you have ever seen this before?

50 replies

SidseBabettKnudsen · 09/01/2017 09:14

Baking a cake last night and cracked an egg - it was full of blood and had an embryo inside!

I'm 40 and have never ever seen this before and didn't even think it was possible as I didn't think egg laying hens could mix with cockerels on farms. The eggs were free range; I got them in Tescos.

Has anyone ever encountered this before? Not a big issue or anything I'm stressed about, I'm just curious to see if this is a common thing!

OP posts:
Weedsnseeds1 · 09/01/2017 10:55

I promise you, it won't be an embryo. Free range eggs from a supermarket are not from hens scratching around in the yard, they are from colonies of several thousand birds in a big shed with pop holes to the outside. There will not be a stray rooster wandering around the farm. The male chicks are destroyed at the hatchery. If you got eggs from someone that keeps a cockerel, you might of course get a fertilised one.

dangermouseisace · 09/01/2017 10:58

My gran cracked one with an embryo in it. It was all grey and the stench…ugh…I've never smelt anything like it.

I'm always a little bit scared every time I crack an egg but in the 30 years since I haven't had that or blood (although egg use is lower than average in our house).

unlucky83 · 09/01/2017 11:02

Yuk- I have seen quite bloody eggs and they haven't been fertilised - just 'extreme' meat spots. My grandparents had a farm and sold eggs - so I have probably seen more 'dodgy' eggs than most - my granddad would find them when candling them - he did it by hand at the kitchen table - and we fed them to the cats.

Years ago a chef I worked with, either through stupidity or ignorance, collected a couple of ducks eggs from a nest on the side of a pond to eat.
He boiled them up, took the top off and was sick. They had been nearly ready for hatching Sad

RagamuffinAndFidget · 09/01/2017 11:04

It's not unheard of for the occasional male chick to slip through the net and find its way onto a farm with the hens. My Mum volunteers for a hen rescue charity and there has been a cockerel in amongst the rescued hens (usually ex-caged but sometimes barn or free range) on more than one occasion.

Hens can actually also change sex. I'm not sure whether sex-changed hens are then fertile as males but that could also potentially be an explanation.

These things happen sometimes.. I personally wouldn't complain because there's not really a lot they can do and I doubt it was done on purpose! If every single egg in the box was the same then maybe I'd say something!

CryingShame · 09/01/2017 11:21

We were always tuaght, when learning home economics at school, to break eggs into a cup one at a time so if an egg was bad, you wasted the egg and not the whole cake mix, as you would if you'd broken it into the bowl.

I don't always remember to do that, as it seems a faff and unnecessary. I guess this sort of thing is why.......

Saukko · 09/01/2017 11:29

I've seen some well minging embryos. Heads, eyes, spines. Small but, yeah. It's no 'meat spot'. It's got blue eyes!

But when I tell people they say it's impossible, so apparently I make up the whole stories.

StealthPolarBear · 09/01/2017 11:38

Do people not eat black pudding?

ZippyNeedsFeeding · 09/01/2017 11:42

Black pudding isn't made from embryos though. I've actually made black pudding and not eaten it since- I shouldn't have chosen New Years Day really!

StealthPolarBear · 09/01/2017 11:45

No it was all the disgust at blood.
I share that disgust but wouldn't dream of eating black pudding.

Daisyfrumps · 09/01/2017 11:48

Free range eggs from a supermarket are not from hens scratching around in the yard, they are from colonies of several thousand birds in a big shed with pop holes to the outside.

Our local supermarket sells eggs from local hens scratching around in the yard :)

downwardfacingdog · 09/01/2017 11:48

This is so gross! I eat loads of eggs and have never had an embryo thank fuck. Ew.

Daisyfrumps · 09/01/2017 11:55

He boiled them up, took the top off and was sick. They had been nearly ready for hatching

Stupid ignorant dick. And stealing duck eggs from the wild is a prosecutable offence Angry

DailyFail1 · 09/01/2017 12:04

Happens sometimes. Thats why I crack eggs one at a time in a cup first. No reason to avoid the brand Hmm

monkeymamma · 09/01/2017 12:09

Ragamuffin has called it right. Chickens can sex change into males where non are available. Watch Jurassic Park for more explanation (I'm assuming we all know that chickens evolved from dinosaurs).

I have lived on a farm and witnessed this, we had one field where there were no cockerels and one of the hens changed into a cock (she had been a hen for years before this).

All this 'impossible' talk is rather funny! It can happen and does, but as others have said eggs are candled now to check what's inside, it's very rare for one to slip through and certainly shouldn't put you off eggs. I do always crack them very tentatively though!

monkeymamma · 09/01/2017 12:10

And yes the sex changed chickens are fertile (that's why they do it, it's to secure continuation of the species). Every day's a school day on here!

Slimmingsnake · 09/01/2017 12:16

I had no idea that an egg was a hens period...knowing that helped me go vegan....although my middle son is vegetarian and loves 🍳..so I'm often stuck cooking them for him .that would freak me out something in the egg

StealthPolarBear · 09/01/2017 12:18

I had no idea hens can change into Cocks. How is that possible? Dumbed down version please :)

hibouhibou · 09/01/2017 12:24

Gross. I just had scrambled egg for lunch.

Member745520 · 09/01/2017 12:27

...maybe quails do it better? Grin

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487083/A-cracking-surprise-as-supermarket-eggs-hatch-out.html

ZippyNeedsFeeding · 09/01/2017 12:30

I had no idea that an egg was a hens period
It isn't. It's ovulation. Hens don't have periods, not least because they ovulate more-or-less daily. The thought of eating another creature's reproductive cells is odd, but it isn't a period.

unlucky83 · 09/01/2017 12:36

daisy I know ...but one thing is for certain - he wouldn't do it again.
Not sure if he ever managed to eat any egg again (I didn't know anything about until I saw him being sick in the bin or I would have warned him)
They weren't 'from the wild' though really - it was a restaurant with a trout pond and the ducks were on the pond. Not sure if they came on their own accord or if they had been introduced as a 'feature'.

liz70 · 09/01/2017 12:46

"I had no idea hens can change into Cocks."

Me neither. Off to google!

Meluzyna · 09/01/2017 12:47

Oh blarrrrrrggggghhhhH!!!!! I don't think I can eat an egg again for the rest of my life. I have a massive attack of the heeby jeebies!

I remember our Biology teacher having an incubator full of eggs that she opened at various stages of foetal development - i'd have been 13 or 14 years old and had precisely this rection.

I'm older and wiser now and always crack my eggs into a cup before use for precisely the reasons outlined upthread - especially as the eggs are given to me by a friend who has hens so they are not screened in any way before I get them.

usernamealreadytaken · 09/01/2017 13:11

I don't think it's "super rare", it's just a thing that usually gets screened out when the eggs are candled. It sounds like just a blood spot which has ruptured, or can also be due to the hen having a bleed before the shell has fully formed and some blood being trapped.

The egg was not fertilised, it is simply an anomaly which has not been spotted at the quality control stage. It's more common in darker shelled eggs, due not only to the thickness of the shell being more difficult to see through, but also down to the breed of hen laying the egg.

If there is any doubt, don't eat it and maybe mention to Tesco, but probably not worth going to the Daily Mail to do a sad face article Wink

BabychamSocialist · 09/01/2017 14:39

Yep, it does happen. We've had it once or twice - it's weird but it's just one of those things.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page