How to Grade Eggs

How to grade eggs:

Have you ever wondered what it means when you pick up a carton of eggs and it says grade AA or A or B? Maybe you’re wondering why your eggs have a grade on them as if they wrote a midterm paper for their college exams and some of them didn’t do as well as others. Hello
and welcome back to the Capitol FFA blog I am Conner Arnold and I am going to teach you about the egg grading scale. A large part of egg grading is a practice known as candling. Candling is
a common practice to help determine the grade of an egg in which the egg is held near

a strong source of light as to make it semi-transparent in order to see inside of the egg.

There are multiple traits to see to help determine the grade of an egg while candling,
one area of focus to look for is the air cell located on the rounded end of the egg.
(See picture below) If the air cell is ⅛ of an inch or less the egg is grade AA if it is 3/16
of an inch or less it is A quality and if it is more than 3/16 of an inch it is grade B.

Now I am sure I’ve thoroughly confused you these grades are simply the quality of the eggs.

If an egg has a grade it has received it from an expert egg grader that searches for many
possible defects in the egg. Contrary to what you may believe an egg with a grade B
is just as edible as a grade A and a B will almost have no difference in taste from an AA.

There is much more that goes into the grading of an egg so for more
information on candling follow the link down below.

Written by: Conner Arnold

(www.extension.iastate.edu/story/sites/www.extension.iastate.
edu/files/story/4-Hprojects/Poultry/1%20Grading_table_eggs.pdf)