The red spot in eggs?

I have heard various things but I'm now asking the poultry world what in gods green earth is the red spot in the egg?

-Fertilized
-separation of something
-alien forces starting life   

Just a little deposit of blood during the egg production process. Nothing to worry about and no reason to waste the egg. They are fine for scrambling or baking.

My understanding is it's a small piece of lining shed into the egg making process and is nothing to worry about. You don't see them in commercial eggs that often because it fades over time. Eggs over two weeks old tend to have less. I find my brown eggs have them more often than white or blue. I just pick the spot out unless I'm scrambling them.

You can candle for large blood spots.

If, though, it's actually aliens, maybe you should incubate them

Fertilized is only able to be told by the Donut v Dot situation. There's a thread or two on her about it with pictures.

Hope that helps!

Very helpful. I have had some in my brown eggs but I was never really worried about. I was just chatting with a neighbor and it came up in conversation about another neighbor who can't eat eggs that have that in them. It all gets cooked anyways so no biggie but some people have different ideas. I just wasn't sure what it was and the debate was always there.

People living off commercial eggs rarely ever encounter it, and there's some rumour that if you DO it's a dead chick omg!

Most commercial grocery store eggs at close to 8 weeks old by the time you get them -- the blood spots have long since faded, not to mention the flavor! HAH!

As Sweetened says, a blood spot, or meat spot, is made up of a little blob of blood. Since blood is water soluble and an egg is mostly water, eventually most blood spots will dissolve and disappear.

Then there are spots that are little lumps of...something? They don't dissolve quite the same, although I suspect they fade.

In the past I have had an atrocious problem with blood/met spots which makes me support the theory that they are genetic and show up more often in brown egg layers than white. My blood spot problem got so bad I warned everyone who bought eggs to always crack them in a bowl and inspect them before using is baking or cooking. Easily 40 to 50% of all my eggs had a blemish.

I have had some terrible hatch rates. 100% fertility but much lower hatch rates at times. I have always wondered if a meat/blood spot in an egg is seen as a flaw or threat and the egg konks out half way through? I have no way of proving this, but wonder if there is a connection. Maybe the developing embryos does not know how ot handle this foreign object and it's game over.

Now that I've had different genetics in my flock over time, the problem has gotten better, but never completely gone away. I still break every single egg into a bowl before I use it for anything. (except hard boiling, obviously)

We've found our large fowl Cochins to be more prone to having the odd blood spots. They have it enough that i don't like giving eggs to strangers because of it. Never had this problem with our other breeds and mutts.

i read somewhere that chickens who have a lot of pigment on the shells will sometimes shed this pigment on the inside of the egg, and so there are often spots on Marans eggs inside which are pigment and not the typical blood spots which are a broken blood vessel during the whole egg laying process.

but...what is the egg laying cycle?.....come on..i need to know

Actually, in commerical operations, eggs that come from there should NEVER have a blood spot that is discernable. Those operations have massive candling machines that pick out any egg that has a blood spot. I don't think it has anything to do with the blood spot fading. I really don't. Those eggs are discarded if they show anything other than a perfect content of an egg. Yes, just a bit of sloughing of the intestinal lining or broken blood vessel, the sloughing of the lining is called "a meat spot" though, slightly different and it is not red, usually more brownish. Both turn me right off and I pick them out of the egg whenever I find them, which thank my lucky stars is barely, barely ever. Have an awesome night, day to follow, CynthiaM.

Or and I think I read somewhere that an egg that is fertile, but has a meat spot or blood spot will not hatch. Just something that appeared from the cobwebs of my mine. Evidently the darker the egg the hen lays, the more prone to these oddities of nature. Heard that too