It’s a topic that attracts various opinions (and reactions), but here we will share our experiences and practices. We will concentrate on heritage breeds here, not commercial chickens.

What is a pullet? A female chicken in the first year of her life.

Pullet eggs. When a hen starts laying for the first time (this can be anywhere between 5 months old and 10-11 months old for some breeds), her eggs are typically smaller than those of a mature 1+ year hen. After the first few months of laying, egg size gradually increases and often reaches her normal long-term egg size around 12 months old, though sometimes this can happen a little earlier or a little later than that.

Incubating pullet eggs. This is a controversial subject because some breeders are against incubating pullet eggs, while others do it. The reason why it’s generally not a good practice to incubate pullet eggs is because being smaller, the chicks that will hatch from these eggs will be small and may be weaker. Another reason is that the pullet hasn’t had enough time to fully grow and “prove herself”, i.e. show that she’s a healthy chicken worthy of breeding.

Our practices. Here at Agia Skepi, we eat the pullet eggs. However, when the eggs get to reasonable size, which can happen anywhere from when the pullet is about 9 months to 12 months old, we start incubating eggs from older healthy pullets for our own purposes, which mainly are to start quality control on this pullet prior to start offering her eggs. We do not sell them though until we have done thorough testing on them and the hen has reached her first birthday.

Egg sizes. Having said all the above, it is important to note that we offer eggs from many different heritage breeds, including from crosses of them aimed at producing rare egg colours. Some breeds (e.g. Araucana) tend to lay smaller eggs than other breeds (e.g. Marans or Leghorn), and egg shapes also differ between breeds. At the same time, each hen is individual and produces her own special egg of a certain type when it comes to size, shape and colour. Some mature hens tend to lay smaller eggs than others, even of the same breed. Some crosses also tend to lay smaller eggs, even when they are mature hens. When you receive a dozen of eggs from us, you may notice there are some bigger and some smaller eggs, especially so when the dozen includes eggs from different breeds or crosses (e.g. rainbow eggs). It does not mean that the smaller eggs are pullet eggs – we do not sell those, but it reflects the mixture of breeds in the dozen, as well as the fact that some hens always give us bigger or smaller eggs than others.

What is important to keep in mind when you buy eggs from us is that for each egg you receive, the hen that produces it has been extensively tested for fertility and hatching ability of her eggs as well as the health of her offspring before her eggs are offered for sale. The fact that you have received her egg means she has passed all the testing with flying colours!

With love, 
Agia Skepi Team