NO YOLK IS NO JOKE

SHELL-SHOCKED: Can you spot the odd three out!

 .. Or who is failing to deliver in the hen pen? 

 ONE of the joys of keeping chickens is collecting their eggs towards the end of the day and now I'm picking up around nine from my dozen hens which I reckons is quite a good payback.

 At this rate I'll be setting up a roadside "eggs for sale" sign and operating an honesty box. Some of our visitors to the Borders are still talking about the concept with incredulity and commenting on how such a system could never work in the South ... a sad indictment on the age we live in, perhaps.

 But something decidedly odd has been happening in recent days - one of the Scots Dumpys is laying miniature eggs containing no yolk only egg white. I told hubby that we should market them as Californian Crackers for folk who don't want a yolk in their omlette but, of course, we can't guarantee the culprit will continue laying yolkless eggs for the rest of her laying life.

 I'm not sure who is the culprit - it can't be Josephine as she is sitting on a clutch of eggs having gone all broody - but the phenomenon sent me diving into the books and making phone calls to find out what is going on.

 Mis-shapen eggs are not that unusual - it's just supermarkets never put them out on the shelves and egg producers usually discard them.

 So far I've gleaned  that it can be a common occurrence in new layers who are still trying to sync their reproductive system, or it could be a lack of grit and oyster shell or it could be a sudden shock just as the egg is travelling down through the hen's system.

 Well my Dumpys by now should have no problems with their reproductive system and so I will put some extra oyster shell into the hen pen to avoid any more yolkless eggs which are known in the trade as fart eggs. I kid you not, that's what they're called - don't shoot the message folks, I'm merely passing on some inside knowledge.