As The Egg Turns

Good morning blogger world!

My husband says I need to share a story with you about the personalities my hens have developed. There are a few details necessary to describe the comical behaviors that have transpired.

Sometime during the winter months, I got sick of feeding the birds.  I had just had a baby in April of 2015, & felt like I was running around with my hair on fire trying to get everything done for my children, let alone the birds.  I asked for some help from my sister, who did help for a time but got bored of it, stopped feeding them & didn't tell me.  The chickens went for about a week without food, and as most animals will do when they are being starved, they will try to escape their confinement.  Mine succeeded.

They succeeded so well in fact, that they ripped the chicken wire up from the floor boards in specific areas & created new nesting areas for themselves between the wire & the exterior walls. So even though they escaped, they would return to these areas and lay their eggs behind the wire where humans and most animals couldn't get to them.  I was actually quite impressed, after I got over the irritation of realizing they had ruined the coop and that I couldn't reach their eggs.

Over the last several months I have slowly re-trained them where I want them to lay.  The birds & I have come to a compromise after several go rounds of them vandalizing the chicken coops.  I won't lock them up, as long as they lay their eggs where I want them to.  This compromise works well for us, the birds are able to go forage for themselves & I don't have to feed them on such a concrete schedule.  In exchange for their freedoms, I have trained them to lay their eggs in 1 of 2 places, and of course there is always that 1 bird that must be contrary and still tries to lay her eggs where she wants and not where I would like. 1 out of 14 is not too bad though so I let her slide.

The places I have coached them into laying in are:

• An old water tank that no longer does it's intended job correctly.  I have filled this tank approximately 1/2 full with hay and "seeded" the nests with fake eggs to guide the birds towards laying there.  
• The tank is large enough for all of my hens to fit in side without touching while laying at the same time if they chose 
• The walls of the tank are tall enough that our German shepherd cannot reach the eggs to hand them down to the yellow mutt.
• I've placed boards over the top of the tank except in key places to discourage scavengers such as raccoons, opossums, skunks & other chickens from raiding the nests.

• An old white plastic milk house sink, stuffed with hay about half-way up & fake eggs seeding the nest.  This location has been placed inside of the second hen house with the door closed and the walls re-secured on the first hen house that they all destroyed so they had to find new spots to lay. 

Both locations work really well. Both locations are too tall for the yellow mutt to get at the eggs (she is my egg sucker) and although the shepherd could reach the eggs in the 2nd hen house, he doesn't because he and I have had a few "talks" about such behavior, including some not so veiled threads of life on a rope if he doesn't behave.

What I have actually found interestingly enough, is that I have 7 who prefer the white sink, and will lay all of their eggs at the same time.  4 of them will sit down facing each other so their butts are in the corners, and chitter chat at each other.  It's almost like they are sitting there gossiping and talking about each other.  "Oh my GOSH!!! Did you see how ruffled Stella was after Foghorn got done with her?  Oh!  He's such an animal!  I wish Heidi would butcher him and get it over with!  The way he uses those spurs on us while breeding is just INHUMANE!"  bahaha.

Then you have the other half of the flock, who prefers to do their laying in private.  And I mean as private as it gets.  They all lay their eggs separately, under cover of darkness (under the boards) & no one talks to each other.  They will wait in line to use the water tank, but no one jumps up early to watch, and if I happen to walk in during one of them laying, it offends her so much she will not lay her egg that day, or if she does, it isn't until LONG after I've gone.  If someone starts pinching, they will fall back on the 55-gallon trash barrels I have throughout the barn.  Their preferred ones are those with paper feed sacks in the bottom, but really it just comes down to whether they need the extra over-flow nests or not.

When I chose to purchase chickens, I had no idea there would be so many personalities and temperaments involved!!  It's like a tiny soap opera down there in the barn!  A friend of the family laughed and suggested I call the chicken drama "As the egg turns", and it probably isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure anyone would actually get as much of a kick out of the chicken drama as I do.

Photos of the beeplas in the adult coop @ age 5-weeks 4-days; Dads honey bee's and a bunny

This is an adult female rex my sister would like to sell.  

She has too many rabbits and needs to downsize a few of them.

I've dubbed this rooster "Rusty".  He is an Easter Egger (Americauna) and it's going to be so fun to see just how he turns out because even right now he's a really pretty boy.

I've dubbed this rooster "Rusty".  He is an Easter Egger (Americauna) and it's going to be so fun to see just how he turns out because even right now he's a really pretty boy.

One of my Light Brahma Hens

The adults aren't "thrilled" with having the newbies, but they aren't "unhappy" either, nor are they fighting with the littles. :-)

The adults aren't "thrilled" with having the newbies, but they aren't "unhappy" either, nor are they fighting with the littles. :-)

Dads new "toys"... he's not obsessing about his honey bee's at all... ha!

Dads new "toys"... he's not obsessing about his honey bee's at all... ha!

Egg Sales

Upon contemplation that I will be getting between 2 & 3-dozen eggs from my pet's, I am thinking perhaps I will pull one of my pallets apart & use the reclaimed wood to make myself a "Farm Fresh Eggs For Sale" sign to place in the yard.  How else would people know I have eggs available for them to buy?

I also am thinking of putting a sign down by the mill so when people come in for tours they will know too.

Of course as my supply increases there is a high probability that my demand will increase as well.  I already have enough people who want eggs at church to take care of a good 20-dozen per week, and if more people knew about the ability to get eggs when they'd like perhaps I could even place more than that.  My mom is kind of feeling overwhelmed with the prospect that I would potentially be selling that many eggs every week.

Then of course there is the fact that I would still have Rick's eggs to place every week, so potentially I would have 40-dozen every week, more if they don't all sell from the week before... yuuuuuup I'll be putting a sign out by the road... and probably an advertisement on Craigs list or something.

Unexpected fluffy butts!!!

I had to go to Angola for groceries yesterday, and something told me to stop into Rural King to see what kind of chicks they had.  All the tanks were empty.  I thought to myself "Both good & bad.  Good that the fluffy butts didn't have to live in those stock tank brooders very long, and that they had gone to their new homes, but bad because they're all gone and I don't have any more to buy."   So I went on about my business, figured it wasn't the right time to "fill out" my flock.

I had ordered 3 buff orpingtons, but mypetchicken must have been running short, because they only sent one.  I had told them to "substitute" if they ran short, so they sent one extra australorp, and one extra silver lace wyandotte I think.  Anyway, I want 3 buff orpingtons, so I moved on to TSC to see if they had any.  They did, and not only did they have buff orpingtons, but they had AMERICAUNA'S!!!   I bought 5 A's & 2 BO's to start with, but ended up going back and buying another 6 A's, which was all that they had.  Yup I'm that awesome.  I bought all of the Easter Eggers they had available.  lol. 

The only downside is that it's straight run, so I have no idea how many of the new fluffies are male or female.  All the newbies are straight run. 

The end count for the new fluffy butt's is: 

1  Buff Orpington F + 2SR
2 Australorp
3 Silver Laced Wyandottes
3 Black Jersey Giant (hen)
1 Black Jersey Giant (Roo)
3 Light Brahma
11 Americauna SR

26 fluffy butts!! :-D

Photos to follow! 

Edit:

 "And what do you think you are doing?? "  - Butter Butt - Dad named it

 Butterscotch - Megan named it

 A pretty little Americauna girl. :-D

 Beautiful coloring on this little Americauna. :-D

 Another Americauna.

 One of the Australorps. :-D

 Silver lace wyandotte girl.  I am loving these stripes!

 Another color variation to the light brahma.  This one has a bad case of pasty butt IMHO

 Yes she was really thrilled with me while I was cleaning her up lemme tell you what...

 Such a pretty little Brahma girl

Look at those fuzzy feet!! Aren't they the cutest things!?

"What causes blue eggs?" & "Why did my recently butchered chickens all taste like feathers?"

Today at church while selling eggs, I was asked two questions.  

Question 1:  (From Rita) "Why do some chickens lay blue/green eggs, & others lay white or brown?"  She told me she preferred the blue/green ones over the other colors because she blows them out then paints landscapes and other images on them, like a round canvas so to speak.  I asked why she didn't use white eggs in that case, and she said the blue/green hue of the shell adds a depth to the paintings that white & brown shells don't.  She specifically prefers the blue ones I guess, but her dozen had one blue, one green, majority brown, pink & whites and she said she would be happy to work with what I had given her.  Now that I know she prefers one color over the other, I can make sure she receives more of the colors she wants. 

In the process of the conversation I explained to her that it was due to the breed, different breeds lay different colors, but that isn't what she was asking and wasn't 100% satisfied with my answer.  I also told her I would be having some Easter Egger's/Americana's/Araucanas coming on 4/21, but then realized that that isn't official for sure, because I wasn't able to nail down any yet, because I don't have an incubator yet, and am unwilling to purchase hatching eggs prior to having an incubator and making sure it works correctly.  Also unwilling to buy expensive eggs prior to testing an incubator out on less valuable eggs. 

Anyway, due to Rita's question, I have done a little bit of google research.   According to HenCam: A Chicken Keeping Life it is "metabolically costly" for hens to produce blue/green eggs, because it requires a chemical called "biliverdin" which is a derivative of the hemoglobin found in blood, and that the "Biliverdin is added to the calcium carbonate earlier in the shell-making process, and so the eggs appear blue all the way through. Chickens that lay greenish, gray, or dusky blue eggs produce both biliverdin and brown egg pigments. The brown overlays the blue."

Question 2: (From Curt) "When we butchered out our 15 (2-year old) hens last fall, all the meat tasted like FEATHERS!!  Why is that??"  I don't know the answer, so I've posted it as a question in "backyardchickens.com" so we will see what comes of it. 
4/9/14 Edit:  After asking BackyardChickens, the basic consensus is that the meat probably got tainted by a feather or two when they processed the meat, and that feeding the flock table scraps shouldn't effect the taste at all.  No one really seems to know why Curt's canned chicken meat ended up tasting like feathers, but that he should discard the meat, and try again next year.