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One Dozen Trader Joe's Eggs, Each with a Double Yolk

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Happy Easter! Let us proclaim the mystery of eggs.

This photo comes to us from Luca B., who says, "So we were making a batch of deviled eggs (yum) as an Easter hor d'oeuvre when we discovered that every egg we had hard-boiled then peeled contained a double yolk! (Purchased from the Trader Joe's in Brooklyn.)"

74 Comments:

Double yolks are pretty common in jumbo eggs

@Luther: Come on. Maybe one or two, but ALL TWELVE? This is pretty crazy.

This is one of my greatest dreams. I love yolks, hate whites. I will search the land for double-yolked eggs!

Isn't this a sign of the apocalypse?

It is weird, but it's happened to me twice in about 30 years of cooking.

I dunno ... either this is really, really cool ... or the yolk's on SE ... ;-)

Were there "666" on the shells prior to boiling?

wow, how do they select for double-yolk ones?

seriously weird!!! Might make think twice about eating them for some reason

They come from first year laying hens. These girls are novices. Next year they will lay one yolk eggs. Talk to your local farmer and he should confirm this.

We've had this happen too, and it was Trader Joe's eggs. Hmm....

Had to confirm my info and the first year laying hens are called pullets, like cows are called heifers when they calf for the first time.

I just bought a dozen jumbos from Food Emporium (Union Square), and the first 2 I cracked also had double yolks. I'm afraid to bust up any more of them!

Don't be afraid to eat these eggs. It is common. Nothing freaky, nothing poisonous. It is what it is. I think of it as a sign of good luck.

Each egg was a twin...Twin baby chicks.
Cute and fuzzy.

I don't think I can eat eggs again...

Did you buy them on April Fools?? ;)

Here in London, I've seen six packs of double yolk eggs (labelled on the pack) being sold. So there must be a way of checking the eggs...

This happened to me once with a box of eggs from Earthbound, an organic food shop in Bristol (UK). As a few people have said, young hens lay double-yolked eggs.

@sulin: I'm pretty sure most big egg producers use a computerized candling process to look through the shell to check for defects -- undeveloped chicks, blood, double yolks, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candling
http://www.ausagservices.com.au/hatchery-automation.html
Not sure why a TJ's dozen would have all double yolks though. Maybe their buyer gets them at a discount.

I remember seeing a show on egg producers and they check for the double yolk and remove them. I have eaten, cooked, openned 25 dozen each weekend day for a restaurant and have never seen a double yolk

Pretty cool--perhaps a good omen, or a sign that twins may be in someone's future-- at least that's what my great aunt always said of double yolks.

I think people arent qiuite getting things to add up. Here's the thing:
Hens lay on average, one egg every day.
When they are new to egg-laying, they do so less frequently, probably because their bodies arent quite in sync yet.
The egg production doesnt always happen at the same rate as shell production.
That means, if they arent laying (i.e. making shell) as fast as the egg part is being produced, their eggs are going to be double-yolk. This means they will lay bigger eggs.
Since eggs are sorted by weight, Jumbo eggs tend to have double-yolks more often.
If you don't buy/use Jumbo eggs, you probably wont see them. If an egg production place chooses to sort and pull all the double-yolked eggs and use them for other stuff, then... you'd never see them.
You should never find an chick in an egg (unless its purposeful like in balut) because the hens are kept separate from the roosters..
:]
My mom always told us that finding a double yolk was good luck.

You're very very lucky! Consider this a special Easter treat!

are these chickens on fertility drugs?????

Ooh that's kind of creepy.
24 yolks! Think of it as a good deal.

Baking and Mistaking

I had a double yolk today. Same deal - was making deviled eggs. Awesome.

Interesting mutation. I wonder if these double yolk eggs can actually produce live births if fertilized.

I mean, would there be room in the egg for two chicks? Aside from that, it could just a mutation that gives double yolk sacs but not two ova.

Does anyone understand that double yolks in eggs in the spring is a natural occurance? I am still reading comments that lend the idea that this is a freak of nature. We had eggs delivered each week for years from the local farmer. Pullets-first year layers is the answer. Not God, not Trader Joe's no matter how great their bean dips are.

@janaatwg: It's not so much that it's a freak of nature — it's not. It's that ALL TWELVE were doubled.

same exact thing happened to me a couple of months ago, bought from the brooklyn trader joe's...

I had a double yolk in one of the eggs i was cooking up at work for lunch the other day.

A restaurant that was close to where I lived when I was a kid always had double-yolked eggs. So, if you got 2 eggs over easy, it looked like you were getting 4 eggs instead of two because of the yolks. I always thought it was kind of a cool thing.

I'd suppose that the double-yolked ones might be separated out if there were customers who specifically wanted them.

I wonder if the yolk-to-white ratio is different.

Adam-Still not that extraordinary. They came from the same supplier. There are huge production farms in lower De. for the purpose of supplying this type of product which is considered premium now. It used to just be a normal course of production of the farms out my way. Still is when I visit my local Amish farmer for my fresh eggs.

only the best at TJ's... yeah right

Eww. That's just too many yolks in one carton. One or two double yolks? A pleasant surprise. But all twelve? That's just too much of a good thing.

I think you should take this as a sign that you will have good luck for the rest of the year! :)

I buy my eggs at Trader Joe's (in Philadelphia) and have a double yolk in just about every dozen. Sometimes two or three. I always thought it was a sign of good luck, but the whole dozen! I dunno about that.

this is sick. really sick.

This is so weird...I bought a dozen eggs at Fairway the other day from the same farm and they all came out with two yolks. There was no discernible difference in taste or texture.

Maybe this is part of the stimulus package???! :)

at this co-op that i shop at they sell fertilized and unfertilized eggs and the fertilized ones have double yolks, but the unfertilized ones don't....maybe you are eating fertilized eggs?

Wow, I have never come across 1 let alone an entire dozen.

Chernobyl Egg Company...

At the farmers market I go to in Dallas one of the farmers seperates out the double yolked eggs and you can buy those by the dozen.

I am getting a real chuckle from these comments. Kids, it really is just pullets, though Chernobyl has to be a great name for a company of something weird.

Kinda reminds me - new meaning for the term Octo-mom!

Dude that is really creepy. Verrryyy creepy.

thanks to janaatwg for the enlightening info! I believe in scientific facts too :) well, janaatg, can you help me answer this question: my mom cracked an egg with the egg white part a neonish yellow!!!??? we didn't eat it because it looked kinda toxic...

that ain't right, and i'm from a chicken farm...

Whenever I buy jumbo eggs at a local ShopRite, ALL of them always have double yolks, with a very rare exception. I'm not talking about one dozen here - every dozen I buy from there, and it's been this way for at least a couple of years. I don't understand what exactly is sick or creepy about it.

Echoing brooke29 here...why is this in any way sick or scary? The answer was given...first year layers often lay double yolked eggs. If the eggs all came from the same producer from a certain batch of layers at a certain time, this will happen.

All kinds of crazy things can be laid by inexperienced hens...try...shell-less eggs!

I guess we're all just too used to industrial, sterile food so that when things get back to nature and start looking a little less uniform we think its SICK?

Factory farms sort out all the eggs that don't meet the textbook image of what an egg should be. Eggs that are too long, too squat, too big, too small, unevenly shaped or colored are all picked out in order not to freak out the oh so fragile consumer.

Egg laying is a complex process...you can bet all the things coming out of the hens aren't picture perfect.

This just FREAKS ME OUT!

so they're twins right?

Total jackpot! Thanks for all the info, guys. My SO LOVES yolks and so do I. I usually don't get jumbo or buy eggs at TJ's but you better believe I am going to do so from now. I have stumbled upon a few double yolks before and was always totally stoked. I would consider myself very lucky to find a whole carton of doubles. Nothing freaky here, just delicious!

Find me that rooster!

It's a government plot to get everyone to switch to artificial eggs produced in a secret laboratory underground in area 52 next to area 51, using toxic waste. It's all so simple.

@shipwreck-It could happen. Keep writing those intrigue/spy novels.

@floodgate11-I think that was a "way too long at the coop" kind of egg.

I need to share my own double-yolk experience. I live in Paris. I often buy cartons of 30 eggs from our cheese/dairy vendor at the outdoor market. Two weeks ago, every single egg out of 30 had a double yolk. I couldn't believe it! The next time I talked to the vendor, I explained what happened & he said it was normal & that you'll find "twins" in the larger, longer eggs.

So, thanks to the previous comments for reassuring everyone that this is actually nature! And explaining why. Between you & my vendor, I feel no more fear with multiple double-eggs in the same carton! Not a freak thing after all.

I have never seen a double yoked egg! I remember first hearing about them in an episode of Little House on the Prairie and always wondering if they really exist... Funny how things stick in our memory.

Same thing just happened to me! I bought the eggs last night from TJs, but they're only large, not jumbo. Weird!

This is so fun!! Lucky you! :)

when i was a kid we had a chook (that's what we call chickens in AUS) that laid double-yolkers every time

THE same exact thing has happened to me!One dozen double yolks in the same dozen.My purchase was from TRADER JOES in SAN DIEGO in May 2009.The eggs are jumbo.

When I was young and impoverished I used to work in an egg packing factory, a horrible job, but it paid well. As people like their eggs uniform my job was to check that the eggs were all the same - they would pass in front of me on a metal grid and a bright light was shone through the eggshells.
Any non-uniform eggs - double yolkers, part fertilised, deformed shells, that sort of thing, were snatched from the line and thrown into a big vat, and taken off to be dried to make egg powder and used in cake manufacturing

Could the egg checker in this case have meant to put the double yolkers on one side for disposal, but made a mistake and packed them instead?

Whoa - I want that dozen of eggs!!! The yolk is my favorite part!

We bought a flat (20) last week from a local organic market and had the same thing happen. All 20 eggs were double yolked. It was the weirdest thing.

This is pretty messed. Unless its normal to have two yokes like that, then its probably a case of genetic mutation by the egg farm companies that went wrong.

We used to get these all the time at the local market when I was a kid. They actually cost more around here, but still taste the same.

That doesn't seem very natural to me.

This post (and subsequent comments) is cracking me up. Wow.

It's odd how many people think it's odd. I wonder what truly odd things they eat daily without reading the ingredients list. (Reading Twinkie Deconstructed...there was so much I already knew and wouldn't eat, but whoa, that confirms it!)

I recently bought a jumbo dozen double-yolked egg packs from a local farm. Just wonderful. It's so easy to find local eggs, even in fairly built-up areas, and once you have them, you won't go back!

My last double yolked egg appeared while I was trying to separate whites from yolks-sure added to the challenge!

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