All about eggs
A laying hen produces around 300 eggs a year on average. To lay good-quality eggs, the hens need high-quality feed and enough light.
In Luxembourg, laying hens are kept in barn systems (housed indoors without outdoor access), free-range systems (with outdoor access) and organic systems (with outdoor access plus more space per animal). In both free-range and organic farming, mobile hen houses can also be used; these are moved regularly to different spots on a pasture. There is no maximum limit to the number of laying hens a farm is allowed to keep.
A laying hen produces around 300 eggs a year. To do so, the hens need good-quality feed and enough light. Light has a direct effect on the hen’s hormonal system: Less light means fewer eggs. In the wild, a hen would not lay eggs in autumn or winter. In a commercial laying operation, hens are simply exposed to longer periods of artificial daylight during this time by keeping the lights on in the barn for 14 to 16 hours a day.
In the hen’s ovary, one egg cell matures each day and develops into a yolk over the course of a week. As the yolk travels through the oviduct, it is gradually coated with layers of egg white. Only at the very end does the hen form the shell around the egg. How hard the shell becomes depends on whether the hen’s feed contains enough calcium. The colour of the shell can be predicted by looking at the hen’s earlobes – the small flaps of skin located just below the ears and directly behind the eyes. Hens with white earlobes lay white eggs, while those with red earlobes lay brown ones.
Depending on the type of housing and barn, the eggs roll straight out of the nest onto a conveyor belt or are collected manually by the farmer. They are then inspected using an egg grading machine, where each egg is passed over a light source to check its interior. This process detects cracks, inclusions or deposits inside the egg. Eggs with such flaws – known as Class B eggs – are then removed. The machine then weighs the Class A eggs and sorts them by size: from the largest, XL, to L and M, and down to the smallest, S.
Finally, each egg is stamped with a producer code, such as 1-LU-123.
The first number indicates the type of farming method:
0 = organic farming
1 = free-range
2 = barn
3 = enriched cage (this method is banned in Luxembourg)
The two letters indicate the EU member state where the egg was produced. The three-digit number is the farm’s identification code.