Posted on 12/05/2024 12:47:24 PM PST by Red Badger
And do they make better pavlova than a penguin’s?
Image credit: Mark F Lotterhand / Shutterstock.com
It’s that time of year again when many turkeys will be adopting an unfortunate position at the dinner table, as is the fate for many other birds classed as poultry. As domesticated animals, we use the products of poultry for bedding, clothing, and food, with perhaps the most common example being eggs. It got us wondering, why don’t we eat turkey eggs?
In the wild, a turkey hen will build itself a ground nest somewhere sheltered in the forest. She then begins a two-week laying window, during which time an egg can pop out every 24 to 32 hours, usually resulting in a clutch of nine to 13, says the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
It’s plenty to be getting on with for a new turkey mom, who will pop off between egg laying to feed so that she can successfully incubate her babies. For egg farmers, however, it’s just not enough.
Why don’t we eat turkey eggs?
In the United States alone there are around 2,500 turkey farms. That’s a lot of turkeys, and presumably a lot of eggs, but they don’t enter the egg market because, frankly, they’re not worth it.
A healthy chicken can lay an egg almost daily, making the *ahem* paltry 32-hour turnover of a turkey seem like a poor yield. Add to that, it takes turkeys seven months to mature to egg-laying age compared to chicken’s five-month waiting period, and they just aren’t as attractive a source for poultry farmers hoping to sell eggs.
a wild turkey among some trees, a second is hiding behind a tree trunk
You can imagine how keeping loads of these things is no easy task. Image credit: SNEHIT PHOTO / Shutterstock.com
If you haven’t seen a turkey lately, may the above photo be a reminder of how enormous they are (and vaguely threatening, if you’ve spotted the second turkey in this photo). Housing such a thing isn’t cheap as they need extra room and food to grow. It’s just not financially viable compared to other domesticated birds in the egg market.
Are turkey eggs edible?
Turkey eggs are edible, just ask turkey farmers. According to Modern Farm, they’re reported to taste very similar to a chicken egg, only a bit bigger with a tougher shell and thicker membrane.
The weird world of eggs
Slightly bigger size, tougher membrane, thicker shell – the turkey egg, while expensive to farm, is really quite normal at the end of the day. The same cannot be said of penguin eggs.
According to Robert Headland, senior associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK, the taste of a penguin egg is an acquired one, being “somewhat fishy as krill form a major part of the diet”. Donald Morrison, who lives in the Falklands Islands, told IFLScience they make a cracking pavlova, but it’s the boiled eggs that are really something.
Boil a chicken egg and you find yourself with that satisfying white oval, but boil a penguin egg and you’ll be faced with a ghostly orb partially concealing an orange ball. It all comes down to the ratio of glycoproteins they contain, according to the Polar Guidebook. While chicken eggs are rich in mostly ovalbumin, penguin eggs contain 25 percent penalbumin, which helps them to survive in the region’s freezing temperatures.
After all this talk of penalbumin, we might stick to eggs of the chocolate variety.
EGGscruciating!..................
Also interesting.
Thx.
My mother grew up in the depression, and she was lucky enough to have an uncle who had a farm, and they got food from them gratis when times were tough.
One of those generous foodstuffs was...Turkey eggs.
Throughout her life, when the subject came up, her face would screw up in disgust at the taste and smell of cooking Turkey eggs.
I have never had any, but she did, and to her, even the thought of eating one was enough to make her blanch...so I doubt they taste the same.
But they probably taste better than bugs!
Are they as good as chicken eggs?
I eat turkey eggs... they are delicious and stay fresh a lot longer.
They also don’t poop in the nest like. chickens occasionally do, so the eggs are really clean.
“wild turkey...”
That stuff will make you think you can jump off a 10 story building. 😁
Never drank any...........
Yes, just bigger and harder..............
I get the yolk!!
How much selective breeding did it take to get chickens to lay eggs all year instead of just breeding season like most birds? Or did their ancestors came from the tropics so season doesn’t matter as much.
That’s exactly right. They descended from the jungles of Asia
Chickens are descendants of Jungle Fowl
https://search.brave.com/images?q=Jungle%20Fowl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl
So they had warm weather all year round in most places.................
Lol.
How about rabbit eggs? They are plentiful and can be used for turkey stuffing.
We used to eat them on the farm growing up. They have a richer taste and I did not like them as much as chicken eggs.
Our chickens didn’t lay nearly as many eggs in the colder months.
Never had turkey eggs. I have eaten pigeon eggs. They taste the same as chicken eggs.
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