Ovulation
on Jul 24 in Uncategorized by DanDue to a pretty crappy day at work yesterday I didn’t have sufficient levels of optimism to check to see if the chickens had started laying. Which meant that when I had a look today I was greeted by a rather impressive bumper crop of first eggs.
By the looks of it I’ve got at least three hens laying at the moment, and hopefully the remaining three should start pretty soon too. Six chickens laying aprox five eggs a week should keep me in omelets very nicely indeed.
I hope the whole process wasn’t too distressing for them. I worry that it was like that locker-room scene in Carrie, with the poor naive chickens flapping around and panicking at the strange things emerging from their bottoms. Sometimes it’s hard to be a chicken.
I made myself some lovely fried eggs for tea though. And I’m convinced that their superior taste was based in reality rather than any prejudice on my part. The yokes were certainly a lot yellower than the ones I buy from the farm down the road.
Great stuff.
Related posts:
- Eggs
- In answer to Jeff’s question
- Where’s Wally the Chicken?
- Hatching a plan
- Who’s idea was it to have chickens again?
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Are the pink one girl chickens and the white ones boys?
.-= Xbox4NappyRash´s last blog ..Shotgun weddings & bastard avoidance =-.
@Xbox4NappyRash, hopefully neither as I don’t have a rooster so they should all be infertile.
Hey… you don’t think that was where you were going wrong before do you?
@Dan, you saying there was something wrong with my co…er…rooster?
.-= Xbox4NappyRash´s last blog ..Shotgun weddings & bastard avoidance =-.
Great stuff indeed. I’ll bet they had a good old cackle after parting with that lot. I hope you like eggs, though and have friends who like them too. Six hens means six eggs a day. The novelty soon wears off! Will you be putting out an ‘eggs for sale’ sign?
.-= Preseli Mags´s last blog ..Simple things please simple minds =-.
@Preseli Mags, I think we’re going for the “give them free to our neighbors” option. But I do eat a lot of eggs, but possibly not 30 a week.
Try making cakes with those yellow yolks and see what a difference it makes. Home produced eggs are the best – sadly, we have no chickens but neighbour does.
@Mark, I’ve bee making a lot of banana bread recently so no doubt they will be thrown in to the mix at some point.
Wow! I love the white ones. I’m sure you’re right and they do taste a million times nicer too. I’m sure they taste better in proportion to the hen happiness and feed quality.
You’re eating very well this week :D
.-= Catherine´s last blog ..Early Birds =-.
@Catherine, the white ones are actually a little bit blue tinged. The photo is a little bleached.
Now just get a few pigs and you can have bacon and eggs every morning. Oh and a cow for the milk and cheese too. Shouldn’t be a problem… you’ve got several acres behind your house, right?
.-= Jeff´s last blog ..Hoping to get wired =-.
@Jeff, I haven’t got several acres, but if you count my neighbors gardens I do. i’m sure they won’t mind if I park a cow on their land.
Mmmm. Making myself a 5 egg omlet right now. Might share with the family too. I’m sure it won’t taste nearly as sweet as yours.
.-= James (SeattleDad)´s last blog ..Art (Over) Appreciation =-.
@James (SeattleDad), probably not, but my eggs were rather small so I don’t think they’d feed a family. thy fed me very nicely though :)
They really look that colour? Marvelous! Almost worthwhile getting some (if only to see the expression on the faces of our very-OCD neighbours with who we share a garden).
How many are they managing a day?
.-= dadwhowrites´s last blog ..More on adoption and the self =-.
@dadwhowrites, these are the first eggs, so I’m not sure how many they are producing as yet. I only got one egg today, but the day isn’t over yet.
As for the colour. the photo is actually a little bleached out. The brown ones are a bit browner, and the white ones actually have a blue tinge to them.
oh fab! Friends of ours have chicken, and I was amazed to hear that they do actually lay one egg a day! How impressive is that?
@cartside, pretty impressive indeed. A chicken’s body is simply a mobile egg producing factory. Think how much they must have to eat to lay one egg a day. amazing.
.-= Dan´s last blog ..Carry My Stuff Across England =-.
Ever since taking this picture after breaking two locally sourced organic eggs and one supermarket (albeit free range) egg into a pan, I have been a convert to the cause. The supermarket yoke just looked a strangely artificial shade of yellow in comparison.
Happy breakfasting!
.-= Steve´s last blog ..A short essay on time =-.
@Steve, they feed commercial chickens yoke colouring food, even the free range ones.
.-= Dan´s last blog ..Carry My Stuff Across England =-.
Oh they look beautiful. In an eggy kind of way. Well done Dan and Kerry’s hens. Fabulous stuff. You will be like Mr Strong. Maybe you’ll turn all square and red.
.-= Jo Beaufoix´s last blog ..Swine Flu – The Real Thing =-.
@Jo Beaufoix, surely Mr Strong is triangular these days?
How do you get the eggs that color? Is it like with carnations—if you feed the hens colored water, the eggs come out to match?
.-= Erin´s last blog ..I imagine this is how Brangelina’s children must treat them =-.