Since our delicious first egg, we've gotten several more. And, oh boy, they are good. Those yolks are so dark, which is interesting because the chickens don't even have green grass to eat...it's all dormant still. Oh, and the yolks stay so completely round when the egg is cracked. Beautiful.
The other night, we had fried eggs for dinner at Caleb's request. We had 6 in the fridge from the past few days, but as I was making dinner, I told Meagan that 8 would be better. She volunteered to go check for eggs one more time and returned with another...still warm. I cracked it and fried it up alongside the others. Now THAT is a fresh egg!
Unfortunately, the hens haven't totally gotten the hang of the nest boxes. There have only been a few eggs laid in there. Most are behind the feed containers in the coop. We've also found 2 in a knocked-over trash can in the garage and 3 in a 50-lb box of nails in the garage! There has also been 1 just in the middle of the floor in the coop, a few random ones on the garage floor, and 1 was even on the top of Riley's (the rabbit) cage.
The hens have taken to roosting on top of his cage which seems fine, except that their poo doesn't fit through the small wire mesh at the bottom of his cage and so his cage fills up with their poo. Poor guy! I go out there and, with a small, short-handled hoe, scrape the poo out. Yesterday as I was doing that, there was a hen sitting on top of the cage. She stood up and was bobbing her rear up and down. She got my attention and I actually watched her lay an egg! It was quite fascinating. Meagan was out there too and got to see it. That was sure an experience you don't get in public school!
With only a handful of the hens laying, we are getting between 3 and 6 eggs a day. A very good average. When all of them are laying, we are going to be just swimming in eggs. I'm going to be cooking a lot of quiche, egg salad, deviled eggs, omelets, meringue, you name it. I'll definitely be on the lookout for recipes containing eggs. Man, this farming thing is exciting.
1 comment:
Hello~ I have recently found your blog and was just now reading about your chickens. I have chickens also and when they first started laying we had some problems with them not laying in the boxes. An older lady told me if I will get a fake egg or two and put in the boxes that they will lay in there better. It is like they like to lay where other eggs are at. I found some great wooden ones at Cracker Barrel. Just mark them - so you know which ones are fake and leave them in the boxes. I hope this helps!!
Lisa in Texas = )
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