Worried about fertile eggs in the kitchen!

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Margaid

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I've been reading Katie Thear's book "Starting with Chickens" and in the chapter on Breeding she reccomends keeping a small breeding flock or trio separate from the other hens so that "the latter can provide eating eggs without the risk of fertile eggs getting into the kitchen".

This may be a silly question, but apart from the obvious that if I'm trying to breed replacements I don't want to inadvertently eat them, is there any reason why you shouldn't eat fertile eggs? At the moment my Welsummers are in a flock with, amongst other hens, a Houdan cock and hen. The Houdan lays white eggs so are easily distinguished from all the others (blue, pinkish and my chocolate brown eggs). So I'm now a bit bothered that some of my girls eggs might possibly be fertile.

It is a situation I may have in the future as I want eventually to get a Welsummer cock and also another breed of hen which lays different coloured eggs. If I HAVE to keep them separate I'll have to rethink.

Any advice gratefully received. :?
 
i wou;dn't have thought there was any difference from the eating point of view, assuming they are equally fresh and have been stored properly. The 'blood spots' that sometimes appear in an egg, parts of detached hen's intestine i believe, are a bit offputting but are nothing to do with the egg being fertile as they occur in eggs from an all-female flock. I would go ahead and eat any of the ggs produced, if i had any fertile ones in the mix!
 
There are no more health risks in eating fresh Fertilized eggs, than unfertilized ones!! You will not be able to tell the difference visually or by taste!!
 
I would mention Margaid that storing eggs in the kitchen at room temperature we have found after a week the blastoderm is so big it is very noticable -about 4mm diameter. Selling fertilised eggs for consumption is OK according to Defra as long as there is "no noticable embryonic development". You are not allowed to store selling eggs in the fridge, presumably because they dry up. We store ours in the cellar at 12 degrees. So as Lord Cluck says eating fertilised eggs is absolutely fine.
 
Thank you all for your replies, you have set my mind at rest. I'm not intending to sell eggs although I may give some to friends if I have a surplus. We eat a lot of eggs - 3 for breakfast every day, and once I've got a decent kitchen again I'll be using a lot more in cooking and baking. I don't like keeping eggs in the fridge but have to at the moment - either the caravan is freezing or far too hot due to direct sun even with this awful Spring. I always bring them out at least 24 hours before using. Once all the building work is done I may well have a coolish room to keep them in.
 
I always keep my eggs in the fridge but in a closed cardboard egg box, not on an open rack, and they never dry up - though we do either eat them or give them away within a week at most.
 
I keep mine in the boxes too Marigold so it's good to know they don't dry up kept that way. I collect two dozen every week from my friend - usually 8-10 of mine and the rest from her hens and they only last us a week.
 
If you have a cockerel in with your hens then chances are all the eggs produced are fertile, it's not something that has ever bothered me, as long as the eggs are collected daily and there is no chance of embryo developement then there is no difference between fertile and infertile eggs eating wise. I think it is just some people for whatever reason find the thought of eating a fertilised egg is nasty!! If you want to breed replacements of a specific breed and you have several breeds running together then yes you will need to put them into seperate breeding flocks for 2 - 3 weeks before you start to collect eggs for a broody/incubator to make sure they are the breed you intended! :D
 
Just to add, every single one of our eggs is fertilised as far as I can establish. Every flock has a fertile male in them. Had three for breakfast as usual -lovely. Thank you Boris and the Leghorn Bantam girls! No-one who has bought eggs has ever asked about it, although they often comment on the lovely country sound of the cockerels in the distance. Pity the neighbours don't see it that way!
 
Katie Thear is a respected author but it's hard to find any logic in the statement quoted ! Makes not a scrap of difference whether the eggs are fetilized or not for cooking.
 
That's what I thought Chuck, but being new to keeoing chickens I wondered if I had missed something.
 
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