You are correct in that commercial egg operations have no need for a rooster and fertilization as the eggs will never be more than just that - eggs. Hens will lay the same amount of eggs regardless of whether or not they have been bred by a rooster.

I have no idea whether or not my eggs have been fertilized, other than folks who take my eggs and incubate them telling me how many hatch out. We will start be starting a chick operation sometime this year with straight Easter Egger and Olive Egger breeds so I will know more then. I was told if you want to ensure the majority of your eggs are viable to produce chicks you should have no more than 20:1 ratio of hens/roosters. Talk about a life!

My point about our eggs having sat around at room temperature on counters and then traveling to Mexico and still being hatched after 5-6 weeks after being laid proves that farm fresh eggs without having been washed are obviously not ‘rotten’ or compromised after that long. Store bought eggs will go bad sooner than that even with refrigeration. The old timers around here say they would have eggs for 3-4 months on the counter and would only use them if they didn’t ‘float’/stand up on one end in water. Apparently when they do start going bad they build up additional gases inside which makes them buoyant - and that’s how the folks long ago used to know if an egg was good or bad.