Runny Egg Whites

How old is the hen? albumen quailty deteriorates with age. also the fresher the egg is ussed teh beter integrity the albumen will have. Also what type of bird is she?

However I must say i usually find home grown eggs have richer yolks and better quality albumen (due to the freshness)

I think this is usually because the hens are old. Are yours ex-batts by any chance?

Avril (but not the one in Leeds)

Yes the hens are ex battery, avril has had them about a year now. Not sure what make they are!? Have noticed the fresher the eggs the runnier they are and avril told me a while ago to let them sit for a day or to before use to firm them up, dependning on use. I think avril was concerned that perhaps there was a dietry reason. One of the girls was pretty poorly and the vet told her it was illegal to give hens food preared for human consumption? But looking on here the hens seem to have pretty varied diet. I will check what she gives them. I know she has all my peelings etc and boils them up and I pass on various greens etc which they love, especially creeping buttercup! This may have to stop once I get my compo bins made on the lotty tho! Generaly the girls are all healthy and she has just hatched some eggs about 4 months ago.

Many thanks

i put it down to the fact that the eggs are fresh rather than at least 6 weeks old like the shop ones, the bit round the yolk is thicker so takes longer to cook

I always though that the egg whites got runnier as the eggs got older?

When you say better quality do you mean firmer? These are definately very fresh but runny? Confused now, as snadger thought older equals runnier

I've been telling family and friends to cook my banty eggs for 30-secs less than shop bought eggs because they're smaller and the white is less runny. I fried one, a couple of days old and it held it's shape beautifully. But then my girls are perfect in almost every way (except for Myrtle being broody and Madge pecking me)

I love my yolk runny and the white firm. Can't bear snotty

older are usually runnier - the fresher the egg when cracked onto a saucer the higher the yolk sits so Snadger is correct!

Ok so from a legality point of veiw it is in fact illegal to give food designed for human consumption to chooks - EVEN back yard chooks! That includes peelings, scrap bread. pasta etc. the law came about as it was believed to be the cause of disease in farm animals that were fed on scraps and swill.

Having said that - most people do actually give their birds treats us included (unofficially of course as were are a registered pouktry holding!) Most common treats given are cooked pasta, cooked rice, cooked mashed spud, peelings, porridge, bread and stale breakfast cereal. I would not advocate giving and scraps that have been on your plate and certainly no meat based products such as mince or sardines or cat food as you often see listed - the risk of contamination from meat is loads higher.

Remember though that treats such as these have very little in the way of nutritional value for your chooks especially starchy foods like pasta a potato but they do make a nice treat. Purpose made chicken food contains everything your chicken requires for a nutritionally balanced healthy life, never offer treats instead of regular feed and always ensure your bird has eaten sufficient feed before allowing treats - like us humans they will eat teh nice stuff before the boring food - think chocolate verses boiled sprouts - 1 is better for us but 1 is sooooo much nicer!!!

Right now i've answered all the other comments runny eggs...

The amount of protein in the white gives its thickness if there is not enough protein or the protein has degraded then the white will be runny

causes:-

old eggs - the protein integrity degrades over time so an older egg will be more runny

incorrect storage - to maintain freshness store eggs correctly, if stored in an incorrect manner the aging process with be faster - 1 day at room temp is equivelent to 1 week in a fridge in regards to age. So store in a fridge and apply rotation - ie use oldest eggs first.

Temperature - if the weather is hot (not a problem today) the a hen is more likely to lay a runny egg this is due to increased water consumption and decreased feed consumption. feed is formulated to be exactly what the chicken requires so if tehy are not eating enough of it then they are going to suffer for it!

Illness - this can cause the chicken to eat less or to have an imbalance in its nutrition, this can be something tha can be dealt with or it may be pysiological. Colds are the most common illness to cause runny eggs in my experience!

Bird age - the older teh bird teh more likely to lay runny eggs this is a pysiological thing and is to do with the way a bird stores and utilises the nutritional componants of food. A younger bird may have pysiological problems especialy one from an intensive system.

The eggs are fine for eating they are just not as good fried and are usually useless for poaching!

Sorry but unless you can narrow it down to storage of the egg or a treatable illness then there is no real cure - you may find it is sporradic and they lay normal eggs occaionally and runny ones occasionally. Ex-batts have all sorts of probs and this is probably a dietry one - however not necessarily one you can solve!! Without going into the pysiology of a chicken it may have been malnutrition in the developmental stages

Ok so as usual sorry about the spelling folks and the 19 page essay - hope it helped though

Wow! Thanks very much for all the points covered. Me thinks I will have to print this off for avril as I will never remember it all!
Looks like a mixture of old age and ex battery girls. The old age thing happens to us all eventually!
It will be interesting to see the difference between the newly hatched (4months) hens eggs when they start to lay and the older ex battery

Avril will be chuffed with all the expertise here. Gonna get her round in the new year to have a look here for herself, so she can have a search and say hi to you all.

Many thanks again
Donnax

Has the ruling changed? When it first became illegal to feed 'meat' to poultry (and pigs) fish was still allowed (indeed many feed products included fishmeal, which, if it is WHITE fishmeal is environmentally sound, since this is {or was} a by-product of the fish fillets and fish fingers. Other fishmeal is derived from 'industrial fishing' and should IMO be outlawed completely on environmental grounds, or made from the 'by-catch', the fish that were caught when trying to get something else...).