The Egg Man's got it cracked

David Herbert, nicknamed The Egg Man, tells you all you need to know about showing eggs

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You’ll get your entries submitted to the show secretary after giving careful consideration to your likely choices. Then you’ll spend the run-up making sure that everything is just right and consistent in the effort to make sure your entries are up to scratch. The day before will be one of final decisions and organisation: ensuring you’ve got any passes, tickets, directions and other relevant paperwork, all before a restless sleep and an early awakening to get loaded and moving. Arrival at the showground usually means a dash to your section where you unpack, apply some finishing touches to your entries and get ready for judging. If you’ve been to an agricultural show you’ll have seen judges of various disciplines making their assessments of the cows, sheep and birds on display; getting hands-on to have a feel for muscular structure or conformity and looking square at the exhibit to get a sense of proportion and line. Then looking at the back end to make sure all is clean and in order and checking that all points meet the necessary standards for the breed or type.

But just how do you go about judging or selecting eggs? What is it that you’re looking for when presenting your egg exhibits in the poultry sections? Whether it be large fowl, bantam, waterfowl or even turkey it’s much the same principle.

Let’s start with the shape. This should be, well, egg shaped. An egg that is too round or thin and narrow is no good. Particularly for chickens, we want to see a broader base and a narrower top. Next we look at the shell and how it was formed. There are any number of undesirable features we hope to avoid. The shell should be smooth, with no wrinkles, pimples, cracks or holes. There should be no excess calcium deposits on the surface and no visible areas of thin or translucent shell.