Grading: clean, dirty, cracked, misshapen eggs, and what to do with them

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.

The 60 trays of the day arrive at the egg room. Among these 1,800 eggs, there are eggs to sell at your price, eggs to sell cheaper, eggs to eat on the farm and eggs to throw away. Mixing them means selling the good ones at the price of the bad ones and giving customers a reason to complain. Grading is the moment when you separate, count, and learn: each category has a cause, and the percentage of each category tells where the house or the collection is failing. This lesson sets up the grading table, fixes the categories, gives the normal percentages and says, for each one, what to do with it.

• ✓Set up a grading table (light, order of movements, destination trays) and grade 1,800 eggs in under an hour
• ✓Recognise and name each category: clean whole, lightly dirty, heavily dirty, cracked firm, broken, misshapen, off-size
• ✓Know the normal percentages and the alert thresholds of each category
• ✓Decide for each category its destination (full-price sale, separate sale, farm, discard) and trace its cause

1. Grading answers two questions, egg by egg
2. Setting up the grading table and the order of movements
3. The categories, their normal percentages and their alert thresholds
4. What to do with them: the destination of each category
5. Worked example: Tuesday's grading, 1,800 eggs
6. The grading sheet: what is written and whom it serves
7. Going further

• •Grading answers two questions per egg: full price or not; if not, which category. Seven named categories, a fixed destination for each, a daily count.
• •Smooth table, strong light above, look then listen (two eggs knocked: clear = whole, dull = cracked) then place broad end up; grade after each round.
• •Normal after 30 weeks: clean ≥ 95%, lightly dirty 1 to 2%, heavily dirty < 1%, cracked 1 to 2%, broken < 0.5%, misshapen < 1%; star crack = shell, clean crack = knock.
• •Cracked and heavily dirty eggs are sold separately, announced, the same day, to someone who cooks; broken ones go into the closed bin, never raw to the hens; an egg taken out of full price does not go back.
• •Each point of clean eggs on 2,000 hens = 18 eggs a day; a category above its threshold three days running is a cause to look for.