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The Double-Yolk Egg

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of double-yolked eggs. In fact, one dozen I purchased had more than half of them with double yolks! That lead me to do a little research about the kitchen phenomenon of the double-yolk egg.

double-yolk egg

Double-Yolk Egg Facts

Sometimes, a chicken can get eggs backed up in her oviduct system, which causes two yolks to be encased in one shell. This occurrence is apparently rare, happening in about one out of 1,000 eggs — so guess I’m just lucky of late.

In fact, in my research I read an article where a woman had a dozen with six double-yolk eggs. I guess I got her beat since my dozen had eight!

That said, given how we produce eggs in the Western world — collecting eggs from flocks of hens who are roughly the same age and selecting for the size of an egg — the odds of finding double-yolk eggs is more like one in 30 than one in 1,000.

More often than not, a double-yolk egg is produced by a young chicken, since her reproductive system has not fully matured. However, a double-yolk egg can also come from an older chicken nearing the end of her egg-producing period.

I used to think that a double-yolk egg was a “twin egg.” However, because the eggs you buy at the store are not fertilized, no twin chicks were possible. In addition, most double-yolk eggs come from young chickens before they are ready to produce viable offspring. Again, not likely to have twin chicks.

Rarer than the double-yolk egg is the egg with three yolks. The record so far is an egg with nine yolks!

Double-Yolk Egg Superstitions

When you find a double-yolk egg,

  • You or someone close to you is pregnant, probably with twins. (Nope, not me!)
  • You will be getting married soon. (I got married in October 2016, so I won’t be doing that again any time soon.)
  • You have lots of good fortune coming to you. (That would be nice.)(
  • A death will occur in the family soon afterward. (Yikes! Let’s hope not.)

So, have you found a double-yolk egg? Share your story in a comment below.

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About the author

Carma Spence has been experimenting in the kitchen since she was four years old and loves trying out new recipe ideas. She is the author of Bonkers for Bundt Cakes and Your Perfect Pie, as well as author and contributor to several more non-food-related books. With Carma's Cookery, she is taking her passion for empowering people and blending it with her passion for cooking, gift-giving and entertaining.

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