Had a store-bought cake lately? Eaten a fast-food egg sandwich? Enjoyed breakfast at a state prison? Then you've probably tried some of Bill Taylor's merchandise.

For more than 30 years the former poultry farmer has been dealing in eggs, although there's not a chicken in sight on his Madbury farm.

KEN WILLIAMS / Monitor staff At Taylor Egg Products Inc., thousands of eggs arrive daily from a supplier in Pennsylvania. White and brown eggs are processed together. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

Taylor sells "egg products," the industry term for what's inside the shell. Every day Taylor, his 15 employees and some high-tech machines wash and crack 360,000 eggs. The yolks and whites are funneled through a pasteurizing machine, then spewed into plastic bags and buckets for sale.

It's how one-third of eggs in this country are sold, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

KEN WILLIAMS / Monitor staff Bill Taylor sells eggs to restaurants, bakeries and even prisons. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

Taylor's customers include commercial bakeries, restaurants and essentially any kind of business that needs a lot of eggs. The state prison system is a good one.

"They have to offer prisoners a certain amount of protein every week," he said. "Which is cheaper, steak or eggs?"

Taylor got into the business more than 30 years ago, when it looked like the tide had turned for poultry farming in New Hampshire. Although raising birds for meat and eggs had been a big part of the agricultural scene, by the 1950s New Hampshire farms were facing competition from large western and Midwestern producers. Costs were low for the larger operators, particularly because they were close to feed supplies.

The Taylors were also facing the hassle of housing, heating and feeding so many birds on land that was slowly being surrounded by development. New neighbors weren't always appreciative of the smell of 125,000 chickens.

It was Taylor's father who decided to start processing cracked eggs for resale, a practice that had been going on for more than 50 years. They began using their own eggs and those of farms around them.

"We had 10 ladies doing the cracking,"Taylor said. "You know how in, say, Mel's diner the cook can crack two eggs in each hand? That's what they were doing."

Business was good. Business picked up. The father and son got rid of their chickens and focused on the eggs.

These days their eggs are trucked up every day from Lancaster County, Pa., and the technology involved is much more elaborate. A computer system oversees the whole operation, checking that temperatures are where they should be in different storage tanks and that eggs are flowing freely through the apparatus.

Cracking is no longer done by hand, but by machine. Metal clamps hold the egg in place then pull it apart, dumping the insides into a metal holder that can separate the yolks from the whites.

Eggs then slide down a trough, the yolks floating like yellow buttons, and are poured into tubes that grow vine-like across the walls and ceiling.

Because the eggs are pasteurized - heated to kill bacteria - they are virtually free of the risk of salmonella. Kitchens in hospitals and nursing homes tend to favor egg products over shelled eggs for this reason, according to Richard Parsons of the USDA.

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