Chickens
This is Lady. She was one of our first chickens. We started with several Americauna chicks. They lay beautiful blue and green eggs. We call them our Easter Egger chickens. Since then we have added a few Rhode Island Reds
Thought I would take a minute to write about the eggs we get. Or used to get in this case. There was a time when we would get between 12 and 17 eggs each day. As you can see from this picture, they came in all colors and sizes. All of them were big, but the big blue one in the middle was a double yolker. And we had others that often had double yolks.
All of these eggs were collected on the same day. I always loved that they ranged from a blue to green with many shades in between, and then we had the brown ones that ranged from almost a pink/beige to a dark red. Once you cracked them, they all looked pretty much the same. At least I could never tell the difference and neither could anyone else that I knew of. Mostly I just loved the idea and the look of the green and blue eggs, and the rainbow of colors in a carton of eggs.
Back then we hand too many chickens it seeemd, and so when a friend needed a couple more layers, I sold some. Thought it was good for my flock, or wouldn't hurt me. And then the dogs got most of our birds and we lost a lot. Guess we purchased turkeys to help them recover, but we never took our chicken laying flock back to those numbers. So right now we have several hens, but only one is laying. About 4 of them haven’t gotten old enough to lay yet, and I have this feeling that when the weather warms up and/or the days get longer, they will start laying. There is also the possibility that the big turkeys were pushing them out of the way for feeding, and so I’m hoping that after getting rid of so many turkeys we will soon see an increase in eggs. So the plan is in the spring to either hatch or buy more hens, and again have many colors of eggs. I would put some of our eggs
in the incubator right now but we are only one egg a day, so in a week all I could gather would be 7 eggs, and then I’d have to buy eggs to eat. Plus they would start hatching the first of January and I’m not sure I want to fill the house up with baby chicks that early in the year. There will be plenty of chicks in the house during the spring once the turkeys and geese start laying. So don’t push it too soon.
All of these eggs were collected on the same day. I always loved that they ranged from a blue to green with many shades in between, and then we had the brown ones that ranged from almost a pink/beige to a dark red. Once you cracked them, they all looked pretty much the same. At least I could never tell the difference and neither could anyone else that I knew of. Mostly I just loved the idea and the look of the green and blue eggs, and the rainbow of colors in a carton of eggs.
Back then we hand too many chickens it seeemd, and so when a friend needed a couple more layers, I sold some. Thought it was good for my flock, or wouldn't hurt me. And then the dogs got most of our birds and we lost a lot. Guess we purchased turkeys to help them recover, but we never took our chicken laying flock back to those numbers. So right now we have several hens, but only one is laying. About 4 of them haven’t gotten old enough to lay yet, and I have this feeling that when the weather warms up and/or the days get longer, they will start laying. There is also the possibility that the big turkeys were pushing them out of the way for feeding, and so I’m hoping that after getting rid of so many turkeys we will soon see an increase in eggs. So the plan is in the spring to either hatch or buy more hens, and again have many colors of eggs. I would put some of our eggs
in the incubator right now but we are only one egg a day, so in a week all I could gather would be 7 eggs, and then I’d have to buy eggs to eat. Plus they would start hatching the first of January and I’m not sure I want to fill the house up with baby chicks that early in the year. There will be plenty of chicks in the house during the spring once the turkeys and geese start laying. So don’t push it too soon.
This is Chanticlare. He was our Americana rooster when we lived in Hawaii. So that means we no longer have him, but he is very similar to what our roosters look like now.