I recently discovered some fairly interesting factoids about the
hens/birds eggs that most of us eat .

I was raised a city boy so forgive me my ignorance ) but this
lead me to a few bio/genetics questions (to follow) hopefully the more
educated in this group can help me with them.

Background
Hens will produce as much as 1 shelled egg a day when they are in
their laying cycle

If the hen has mated with a rooster within the last 3-4 weeks the eggs
can be fertilized by the sperm she STORED!, However the shelled
end-product egg we know will be created now around the SINGLE egg-cell
gamete, added yolk, and albumin, whether they have been fertilized OR
NOT.

Commercial diary eggs are NOT fertilized (hens kept away from
roosters) The blood spot often found in eggs is not an embryo
product, it is just from the hen bursting a capillary and the yolk
touching it before the shell is grown around the unfertilized egg!

Hens generally produce about six eggs and then go into a brooding
cycle were they would incubate the eggs for their 21 day hatch date

"DrBenway" somewhere.com> wrote in message news:ebsuo8$890$1@darwin.ediacara.org...

DrBenway wrote:

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:03:04 -0400 (EDT), DrBenway somewhere.com>
wrote:

DrBenway wrote:

Alas, complications - e.g. see:

Sex Ratio at Birth, by country:

e/female%%26format%%3D.htm
....and...

``Because the male mortality rate is slightly higher than
the female mortality rate at most ages, the sex ratio at
birth is higher than that observed later in life, for
example, at 1 year of age or at reproductive age. And it is
generally believed that the sex ratio at conception, that
is, the primary sex ratio, is even more skewed in favor of
males than is the secondary sex ratio.''