That's a weird one

Well that's a strange egg

Too young for mommy-hood

A few weeks ago one of the chickens disappeared.  No sign of feathers or anything.  A couple weeks ago we got rid of our last rooster because he kept chasing people.  Sometime between last night and today another chicken went missing (thanks to the son not propping the coop door open and the birds all getting locked out at night, during a storm until I found them after 10PM.

So I went looking.  I was determined to find evidence of where this one went.  I finally saw something, and from a distance she looked like a bloated dead bird.  I thought maybe she got hit by a car and this was her body on the side of the road, wet from the storms that keep coming through.

I was scared to even touch her, well really I was grossed out.  I was scared she'd be cold and dead and gross.  But her eyes were open, not blinking, for a solid two minutes and I thought a bird wouldn't die with it's eyes open, would it?  I finally reached down and poked her and she turned and started attacking my hand.  So I reached down with both hands to pick her up.

These were all of the eggs under her!  I handed her off to the boy and gathered the eggs.  She'd been sitting on these eggs through the storms!  All but two were warm, although I'm not sure if any are fertile since we got rid of the rooster.  She was not happy but we moved everything into the coop.  They're all the same color so I suspect she's been laying in this spot, by the road for awhile now and then decided, during the storms, it was time to sit and become a mom.

Eggs Eggs Everywhere

The chickens are laying pretty regularly now, we got five today!  They're still cute little eggs at this point.  The bad news is that they keep laying them on the ground.  I think I need to build new/better nest boxes.

Our first eggs - again

I found out first eggs last night!  They were laying on the coop floor (not cool chickens!) and were so tiny and cute!  

Penny for scale size

We have several breeds and they all lay brown eggs, so that doesn't help us to figure out who might have started leaving us breakfast treats.

Not again, Norma Jean!

I have  no intentions of having more chicks or chickens.  We have enough.  Norma Jean apparently disagrees.

And she isn't sitting on just the 5 eggs I thought she had...

Laying Gold

The girls started laying regularly again about a week or two ago.  Every afternoon or evening when I collect the eggs, I think that it feels like I'm finding gold.

This afternoon, even though it was bright and sunny outside, three girls were busy laying me some more gold.

Why color eggs for Easter....

We now have eggs that come in green, olive, brown, tan, and PINK!  The picture doesn't do the colors justice.

Painting toe nails

I've been wanting to figure out what color egg each of my bird lays for awhile, but haven't put the time and effort in to the project, until now.

I've been putting one bird in each of the two cages we have and I leave her in there with food and water until she lays an egg.  So far three girls have laid light brown eggs, which wasn't what I was expecting.  Right now I've been checking the black and white speckled girls that came from Clyde's hatching last spring.  They all look very similar so I needed a way to be able to tell them apart once I figure out what color eggs they are laying.

It only seemed natural that I go with a finger nail painting method until I find something that's more long-term.  I tried white polish on the first girl, but the next morning I could barely tell which one she was, so I had to go to something a little more bright.

Just another adventure on the farm.

I learned something new

Apparently I've been candling wrong.  Tonight, we candled a few more eggs to see how things were going after after a couple eggs, I decided to try the light coming from a different angle.  

It was amazing.  We could see a mass and movement in nearly every egg!  I was squealing like a little kid!

Of the 14 eggs that are in the incubator, we saw signs of life in all but three of them.  One of them was completely stuck in the egg turned and I was scared to break it by pulling it free and two of them were almost see through.

I decided to run out to the coop to check on the eggs under the hen and I snapped pictures of those eggs.  Four of the six showed signs of life.

This is a bad egg

This is amazing!  It was so cool to see them moving inside the shells!  Now I feel like I need to do a lot of research on what I need to do to keep them alive until hatching.

This post was shared on the Homesteaders Blog Hop.

The First Candling

We finally candled the eggs that are in the incubator.  The eggs have been in the incubator for 7 days and the eggs themselves are between 10 and 14 days old.  I'm no expert when it comes to candling but I know we should be able to see some solid forms inside the eggs at this point.  While we did see some signs of life. we didn't see very many.

We candled the New Hampshire eggs first.

Egg #1 definitely showed signs of life.  The dark mass in this picture was moving around, coming closer to the shell and then back towards the center.  We also saw some of the lines that I believe are veins.  It was a good start to our candling adventure.

Egg 1

Still on Day One

When I woke up this morning I checked the incubator and it was only at 80 degrees and 80% humidity.  I got some of the water out and turned the heat up before running off to the gym.  When I came home an hour later the temperature was finally almost right!  99 degrees and 60% humidity meant I just needed to bring the humidity down.

But then I looked at the second thermometer that was inside the incubator.  It was well over 100 degrees!  The humidty gauge was obviously broken on this one, but which thermometer was right?!

Who knew eggs could cause this much stress?!

The oldest text me to say the eggs had arrived today.  I believe my response used the word "CAREFULLY" several times when I told him where to put the boxes.

When I got home there were two boxes waiting for me.  One of them was decorated so cute.

It was like opening a present.

When you want to hatch special eggs

I have promised myself several times that I would not get more birds unless they were purebred birds. I did a little research and thinking and decided that having chicks now, in the winter, would be a good idea because when they are ready to start laying in 6 months, it will be spring. The problem is that our eggs are "barnyard mixes" and local breeders have let their birds all roam together for the winter and so their eggs aren't pure bred either.

Someone recommended that I buy some on Ebay, and that is how I found myself in a bidding war for various chicken eggs tonight. I haven't been on ebay in at least 8 years!

We won 6 (or more) New Hampshire eggs from a German bloodline.  These were two of the pictures that the sellers had posted.

And we won 11 (or more) Silver Laced Wynadotte eggs from the Foley bloodline.  These were the pictures they had posted.

I can only hope that they all arrive in one piece, that I am smart enough to handle them carefully, and that between the broody hen and the incubator that we have a good hatch rate.  If we can get just half of them to survive that would be about 9 chickens, and so maybe 4 hens to add to the flock.  

I'm also planning to pick up some other chicks from a local seller next weekend.  

This post was shared on the Homesteaders Blog Hop

Pictures of the eggs never get old for me

It looks like the girls are finally using more than two nesting boxes.  We found eggs in three of the boxes this week and have caught three girls nesting during the day in different boxes.

And here is a picture of the 9 eggs I collected one day this week.  It is always so cool to see the different colors.

This post was shared on The Homesteaders Blog Hop

Another Weird Egg

Check out this crazy one.  It looks like it just didn't have time to finish closing shut.  I accidentally touched the middle when I set it down and it broke, letting some of the egg white through.  

Treasure Hunt

As we were walking into the house this evening, the oldest said he saw a guinea egg on the path to the neighbor's house.  I told him to go get it and started heading in.  He called me back and said there were several eggs there.

Eleven eggs.  Stupid bird.

Now that's a weird one

Check out the top of the egg I found in the coop this afternoon.

It was all hard like a shell, but there is a hole and that strange shape.  I've heard of things like this happening, but we hadn't seen it yet.

Don't people pay for frozen eggs?

Now I know what happens when an egg freezes...

Eggs - Store bought, colors, and nutrition

Store Bought Eggs

Eggs in grocery stores are mass produced.  The chickens that lay green eggs are more rare and therefore are not the "mass production" type of birds.  That's why you won't find green eggs in grocery stores.  There are also birds that will lay pink eggs, no really PINK, and they are even more rare than the green layers.

When buying eggs from a grocery store, the brown eggs are no different than the white eggs.  They both have the same nutritional content when bought from the grocery store (mass produced eggs).  To sum up my research, back in the day, white eggs were mass produced by the cheaper birds that were fed cheap food.  Brown eggs were raised by farmers and families and had a more diverse diet of weeds and bugs and this would enhance the eggs (flavor and nutritional content.)  

Mass producers realized that people wanted brown eggs, so they got brown chickens and started mass producing them.  However, they're fed the same cheap food as the white layers, so their eggs come out with the same nutritional value and bland mass-produced flavor - but with a higher price tag. 

The moral of the story - store bought eggs are going to have the same nutritional value and flavor regardless of their color or price.  Eggs from birds that are fed a better diet - outside of a facility - are going to have a better flavor and a better nutritional content.

In fact , research has shown that home raised chicken eggs have these features (compared to store bought/mass produced eggs):

• 1/3 less cholesterol• 1/4 less saturated fat• 2/3 more vitamin A• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids• 3 times more vitamin E• 7 times more beta carotene

Why Green Eggs?

Personally, I wanted green eggs because it's different and funny and because when I had chickens on my dad's land as a teenager, half of them laid green eggs.  I have read in a variety of places that green eggs are slightly different nutritionally, specifically that they have lower cholesterol levels.  

Regardless of "green eggs" being healthier - it's clear that home grown chickens - with access to sunlight, exercise, bugs, and a diverse diet - produce much healthier (and better tasting) eggs.

In case you wanted a few more interesting facts:

• In 1974, the British Journal of Nutrition found that pastured eggs had 50 percent more folic acid and 70 percent more vitamin B12 than eggs from factory farm hens.
• In 1988, Artemis Simopoulos, co-author of The Omega Diet, found pastured eggs in Greece contained 13 times more omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids than U.S. commercial eggs.
• A 1998 study in Animal Feed Science and Technology found that pastured eggs had higher omega-3s and vitamin E than eggs from caged hens.
• A 1999 study by Barb Gorski at Pennsylvania State University found that eggs from pastured birds had 10 percent less fat, 34 percent less cholesterol, 40 percent more vitamin A, and four times the omega-3s compared to the standard USDA data. Her study also tested pastured chicken meat, and found it to have 21 percent less fat, 30 percent less saturated fat and 50 percent more vitamin A than the USDA standard.
• In 2003, Heather Karsten at Pennsylvania State University compared eggs from two groups of Hy-Line variety hens, with one kept in standard crowded factory farm conditions and the other on mixed grass and legume pasture. The eggs had similar levels of fat and cholesterol, but the pastured eggs had three times more omega-3s, 220 percent more vitamin E and 62 percent more vitamin A than eggs from caged hens.
• The 2005 study Mother Earth News conducted of four heritage-breed pastured flocks in Kansas found that pastured eggs had roughly half the cholesterol, 50 percent more vitamin E, and three times more beta carotene.
• The 2007 results from 14 producers are shown here.

Here is just one of the sources I've looked at:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-10-01/Tests-Reveal-Healthier-Eggs.aspx