Young chickens will often lay eggs with double yolks when they first start laying. I'm guessing the connection with the butcher is older chickens are butchered and they have a continual stock of young chickens just beginning to lay.
They are called mixed purpose (both egg laying and meat) and in the US are some of the most common breeds for small egg production farms.
Some really really common mixed purpose:
Dominique
Plymouth Rock (my sweet babies who I will never eat)
Americauna (I would eat this bitch but she's my heaviest layer)
Rhode Island Red (also a universal bird and one of the friendliest and doglike)
Australorps
Buff Orpingtons
Wyandottes (These are what my aunt raises)
Jersey Giant
Araucana (this breed is old and almost went extinct, some have been bred to be dual purpose recently but not all are)
Note: all of these are bred relatively recently and mostly in the US. If you are from Europe they will have their own, easy to obtain breeds and likewise for Asia (Vietnam chicken game is insane).
My Aunt literally has made a business out of this and I have sent small batches to the butcher. Butchers who buy small lot and eggs tend to have a LOT of suppliers and are just buying lots. The birds being butchered aren't necessarily the same as the layers.
I don't get a lot of reason to talk about chickens but have you ever seen a dong tao chicken? They have feet so big it's like they are wearing boxing gloves
I have an aunt in Vietnam who raises them for shows, she has sold certain roosters for over $5k USD. Vietnamese used to bring them over from vietnam but avoid it now a days because of a required 30 day quarantine for the chicken at a USDA facility since most of us don't own a private permitted facility for quarantining birds
Oh I forgot to mention, its something like 5% of dong tao roosters that actually have the desirable feet at least by vietnamese standards, probably another reason they are so novelty
I trust you but I also feel like “Australorps” and “Buff Orpingtons” are names that I’d make up if I was asked to come up with names of chicken breeds.
I have 3, they are my husband's special pets. They were originally bred as meat birds in Asia, but like ceremonial or medicinal due to the fact that their muscles and viscera are black.
In the US they have been further specialized into novelty birds. They are fancy pets bred for various visual traits and doglike demeanor. Ours are extraordinarily trusting and sweet, the rooster in particular is one of the most docile and affectionate birds I've ever met. I get about 2 eggs a week from a 1 year old bird and they are smaller than ping pong balls but seem to lay throughout winter. I had some for breakfast this morning.
Some people do still breed them for meat in the US but its usually within Asian communities. I'm in the bay area of the US which has the highest asian population inside the country. I do see it sometimes but it is not common.
I got this reply from an owner of an egg farm many moons ago:
"Yes it is uncommon but it is totally natural as the bird comes into lay in mixes up its cycle
sometimes and releases 2 eggs at once. (Ovulates twice) New shed of hens when they come into lay
will produce maybe 4 double yolkers every 10,000 eggs. We tend to grade a few days eggs in one day
so those 4 will go into a carton because it is graded on weight. The first eggs are always small say
40g but the doubles will be 65g so they will all end up in a 700g pack. But maybe only 2 dozen packs
are made in 700g. At the present time I am trying sprinkle the doubles through other eggs so they
don't end up in one dozen as people love to see them.
We try to separate them at farm level. I do sell them separate to a couple of stores as double
yolkers but the odd carton goes out to the supermarkets."
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u/gxbcab Dec 18 '22
It’s very common to find cartons of double-yolk eggs, especially if you buy eggs from a butcher.