Buying A Better Egg

It’s impossible to talk with someone who knows poultry and not pose the which-came-first question.

“I guess you’ll have to talk to God about that,” chuckled Dave Culp, a gentleman farmer who supplies eggs to Lorien Herbs & Natural Foods in Spokane on a limited basis.

Beyond that age-old chicken-and-egg debate, there’s probably no food that is shrouded in such cultural symbolism.

Around Easter and Passover especially, eggs are a sign of rebirth. Thousands of years ago, eggs were used to tell fortunes, to determine the sex of an unborn child, as a good luck token for newlyweds.

Yet, for most of us, the egg is the universal symbol for breakfast. Americans gobble millions of eggs sunny side up, scrambled or poached - each morning.

Most are laid by single-comb leghorns in industrial-type warehouses, but in recent years, there has been a return to the traditional barnyard.

As natural foods moved into the mainstream and terms like “free-range” chicken became more familiar, consumers began buying eggs from “cage-free” hens. While many of those producers operate on a large scale in California and Western Washington, there are a handful of egg suppliers around Spokane.

“We get eggs from Bramble Rose Farms about once a week, and they just fly out of here,” said Ron Clack at Huckleberry’s. At $3 a dozen, no less.

When they’re gone, they’re gone. There’s no way to coerce a barnyard chicken to lay more than an egg a day. (In the bigger operations, constant light speeds up the cycle slightly.)

The process begins when a pullet (a female adolescent) becomes a hen - at about 7 months old.

When chickens become mature, yolks develop in the hen’s ovary before moving into a long, tubelike organ called the oviduct. There, it takes about three hours for the albumen (the white) to form around the yolk, then another hour or so for the thin shell membrane to form around that. The egg passes along to the uterus where the shell hardens during the next 19 to 20 hours.

When the egg is laid, the large end comes out first and the hen lets out a triumphant (or perhaps relieved) cackle. Fifteen to 30 minutes later, the hen’s reproductive organs start the whole process again.

Culp typically collects eggs in the evening from the 23 chickens he’s raised. “They slow down a little bit in the winter, but then we leave a light on for them,” he said.

A typical hen will produce nearly every day until they’re about 3 years old, when they might lay only three or four times a week, Culp said.

When they’re not roosting, the chickens roam the yard, doing exactly what you’d expect: pecking and scratching. Culp said he likes to hear them sing and cluck.

He feeds his flock a mix of ground grains (corn, peas, wheat) and greens. “They love grass clippings, beet tops and this special Swiss chard I grow just for them,” he said.

They’re also given ground oyster shell or sand, which settles in their gizzard and helps them digest their food.

That varied diet is what produces a better-tasting egg.

“You take a store-bought egg and put it next to a farm-fresh one and you can see the difference,” he said. “The yolk is darker. They just have a better flavor.”

By the way, the color of the shell has nothing to do with the taste or the quality of the egg. It’s simply a reflection of the genetic makeup of the chicken. Leghorns lay white eggs, Rhode Island reds and barred rocks lay brown, and more exotic varieties such as araucanas lay eggs in a rainbow of shades, from pale blue to pink, even gold.

For years, eggs were much maligned for their high cholesterol content. But new studies have suggested that it’s saturated fat, not cholesterol, that raises cholesterol levels in blood. The American Heart Association changed its recommendation to allow for three to four egg yolks a week when new evidence showed that the dietary cholesterol in an average egg was 213 milligrams, not 274 as previously measured.

Eggs also are an inexpensive source of vitamins A, C, D, E, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and B-12.

Aside from health concerns and the great debate about which came first, there’s no denying the versatility of these little protein packages. In countless recipes, they have the power to leaven, bind and clarify. A brush of egg white on dough can make pastries glisten and the addition of yolks can thicken a sauce.

And, besides, what else would the kids dye for the Easter bunny to hide?

Maybe that’s the real quandary: Which came first? The Easter bunny or those colored eggs?