[turners]

my neighbour has told me that it is illegal to sell eggs if you have the hens running with a cockrel, is this true ?

[joyfull]

my girls run with cockerels but I ask for a donation of £1 for 6 eggs towards their feed and I also warn people to eat within 3 weeks and not to keep the eggs anywhere warm.
Also if you sell them as free range then you must have at least 4 square meters of ground space mainly covered with vegetation per bird.

take a look at this:-

http://www.poultry.allotment-garden.org/Chicken_a/Chicken_Egg_Excess/selling-eggs.php

[Chookiechook]

Crikey.... some choook keepers will be in trouble then

this is what I found that is in a Kate Thear book  ....

Fertile eggs
If hens are running with a cock the chances are that they will be laying fertile eggs. These should not be offered for sale for they cause offence to many consumers. Registered producers are required by the egg marketing regulations to produce eggs with, ‘a yolk that is free of foreign bodies’.

There is considerable misconception about this subject, with people making varied claims such as: ‘hens lay better when there is a cock with them’, and ‘fertile eggs are more healthy and nutritious’. In fact, the opposite is the case with both claims. With the former, there is a greater risk of disease transference, as well as physical damage to hens from the male’s spurs. With the latter, there is a greater risk of disease-transference into the egg.

Traditionally, breeding flocks and laying flocks were kept quite separate, as they still are with free-range flocks today. If you have your hens running with a cock and don’t object to eating fertile eggs, that is of course your own business, but selling them to others should be avoided.

Not sure still though if its illegal

[dizzylizzie]

Well, im not registered with Defra, so can only sell my eggs 'on the gate'. So all the 'rules' dont apply! My girls run with a cockerel, and all my customers know they do. I dont think it is illgal as one of my main customers is the enviromenal health person who i met when he came to investgate a complaint about the cockerel.He calls every friday for a dozen eggs on the way home from work
The little red bitsyou get in eggs are NOT from a cockerel, they re just meat/blood spots. I had to have the bit on the yolk that showed they were fertile pointed out to me!Its not obvious unless you are looking for it, andive never had anything 'nasty' in my eggs

[azubah]

Back in the good old days no-one ever worried whether eggs were fertile or not.
All farms had cockerals as they would have had no chicks to replace the old hens if they did not.

[Squibbs]

There was an article about this some time ago in Country Smallholding Magazine which was in reply to an earlier comment implying that it was illegal.

It definitely isn't illegal to sell eggs that are fertile for consumption. Graded eggs are not supposed to have a visible thingy (cant remember the name of the thing thats a pre-embryo).

If you do keep them in a warm place (which might include your egg selling place in summer) then there may be some development and I doubt your customers would be keen on that.

[dizzylizzie]

Germ cell?

[GrannieAnnie]

Well if it IS illegal to sell eggs that may be contaminated by a cockerel, why do many of the commercial egg farms have a few cockerels running with the girls to help keep them calm and happy?

That is why that little boy, was it last year, hatched a chick from a Tesco egg!!!  

Can't find that one for the moment, but here's another!!

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Good-egg-family-breeds-Tesco.880024.jp

 

[Squibbs]

Germ cell?

Yes I think that's it

 

[TeaPots]

Germ cell?

Yes I think that's it

 

tis called the germinal disc

[dizzylizzie]

Germ cell?

Yes I think that's it

 

tis called the germinal disc

Oh well it seems im wrong again!
Good job there are people on here who actually know what they are talking about eh?

[TeaPots]

Just say it with confidence, then peeps THINK you know what you are talking about 

[GrannieAnnie]

germ cell, germinal disc, same difference!