The table egg: what the customer buys (freshness, size, shell, colour) and what makes them vary

This lesson is part of Table eggs: from nest to customer specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.

A house of 2,000 brown layers at 90% lay gives 1,800 eggs a day, that is 60 trays of 30. Each of these eggs will be judged by someone who does not know your farm: a housewife at the market, a shop manager, a restaurant cook. They look neither at your lay curve nor at your feed conversion. They look at four things, in a few seconds: is the egg fresh, what size is it, is the shell clean and strong, what colour is it. This first lesson teaches you to see the egg with their eyes, to understand what lies behind each of these four criteria, and to put a figure on what they are worth over a day of 1,800 eggs.

• ✓Describe the table egg (shell, cuticle, pores, air cell, white, yolk) and say what each part is for
• ✓Explain how an egg loses its freshness and how fast depending on temperature
• ✓Grade an egg by size (S, M, L, XL in grams) and explain what makes size, shell and colour vary
• ✓Read a day of 1,800 eggs with the customer's eyes and work out, in percent, what sells at your price

1. An egg sells on four criteria, and all of them have a cause on your farm
2. Freshness: what it is, how it is lost, how fast
3. Size: S, M, L, XL in grams, and what makes size vary
4. Shell and colour: what the customer believes, what is true
5. What the customer does not see but senses: smells, taste, and trust
6. Worked example: a day of 1,800 eggs read with the customer's eyes
7. Going further

• •The table egg is a living product: it loses water and gas through 7,000 to 17,000 pores, the air cell grows, the white becomes watery; the cuticle is its first protection.
• •Freshness = degrees × days: one day at 30 °C is worth about one week in the cold; about 1% of weight lost per week at 25 °C, twice as much at 32 °C.
• •Sizes: S < 53 g, M 53-63 g, L 63-73 g, XL ≥ 73 g; weigh 10 trays a week and know the distribution before promising.
• •Shell colour = breed, stress, heat, age; yolk colour = feed; blood spots = natural on 1 to 3% of eggs; none of these colours tells freshness.
• •Target: at least 95% clean, whole and graded eggs; each point of defect on 1,800 eggs is 18 eggs a day, 540 a month.