Tag: Chicken

A Bit of Chicken Humor: or the truth about eggs

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Chickens the world over have one thing in common.  They all lay eggs.  The process of  ‘puberty,’ if you will, begins at about age 4 to 6 months on average.  The event is always spectacular to hear.  She lays her egg in the nest and then begins a litany of clucking that could raise the dead and will begin the other hens to clucking as well.  Every day and every time.

All of them.

Nineteen of them.

Now you might begin to suspect this would be annoying to hear every day, but it isn’t.  Well, not to me anyway.  I hear the cackling begin and think it is all for fun to them.  Seriously.  Why just the other day I heard them all laughing at a something Tippy The Buff Polish was clucking…

Gaaaak! KAK, Kak, kak…!  and Cuck, cuk, cuc, and cackle-cackle currrrrr, etc.

Translation?

Tippy the BP:

“Ahhh, ha-ha-ha!   Girls listen to this!

Today I snapped up five brown beetles,two juicy green worms, and a couple of spiders hiding out back.  Mmmmm… and for dessert I had this giant Palmetto bug!  (whispered) Then I found this…

Oh! Hey girls… Shhh!   SHHHHHH!   Here comes  the Lady of the Farmlet with her basket to steal my hard work!”

All the Girls:

*“Caaaaak, Cac-Cac-cac-cack!”

Well, I actually could be grossed out by all, but the truth of it is this:

If my chickens were not left out to pasture each day my eggs would be bland and boring!  This is because it is the grasses, weeds, seeds, and well, bugs that make the lovely orange color in the yolks.   You just won’t find it in store-bought eggs.  My girls are also wonderful, organic pest control and garden fertilizers as well.

Now eggs come in many sizes and colors.

( http://www.dreamthymefarm.com/farmproducts.html )

The first eggs are usually small, an inch in diameter or so measured through the middle, and as time goes by the hen matures and they get much larger.

However, sometimes the younger hen will produce this…

© Lynda Swink  and “Life on the Farmlet,” 2010

It is called a “Double Yolker” and it is produced by an immature hen.   When two yolks come into the egg chamber they are encapsulated into the shell as one.

Poor little hens!

Rest assured, this is not a lifelong condition!   Thankfully, it is intermittent lasting only about a month at the beginning of laying.

So, while I may appreciate all my Girls do for me and love to eat their eggs, I am nevertheless glad I am not a chicken!

“:< >

*The sound a chicken makes when it’s laughing at you.

Thoughts on the price of eggs…

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As you are aware I am back in the chicken egg business again.  To say that the business proposition does not make one wealthy is an understatement, but for the most part the sales pay for feed and scratch.

If I let myself start thinking on it, as I am now, I can get a bit perturbed.  Why you ask?  Well, it’s this way, if I sold my Farm Fresh, Pasture Raised Hen’s Eggs at the farmer’s markets over in Madison, I could get $3.50 a dozen for them.  If I lived in Connecticut,  like Red Bee Marina Marchese, I could get $5.00 a dozen!  As it is, I live here in N. Alabama in a tiny farming burgh and try to sell mine for $2.50 per dozen… but the potential customers scoff at the price.

Here is a recent example of what I am up against:

I finally spent the money to put up a sign on the main road to point potential customers to the Farmlet.  So after three days of not getting even a nibble… I got a customer!

The lady gets out of her car and carefully walks across the lawn.  She’s one of those heavyset ladies with the tightly curled and blue tinted hairdo that ladies of a certain age are all so fond of.  When she gets to the door and rings I open it and politely greet her.

She says, “How much foh yuh eggs?”

I say,  “$2.50 a dozen”

Upon hearing the price I see her eyebrows have shot up and she is now clenching the clasp of her handbag and holding it to her ample bosom.  After the momentary shock wears off she drawls, “That’s way moah the the stoah’s sellin’m foh!”

To which I politely explain that mine were after all laid yesterday,  my hens aren’t kept in inhumane conditions, if she tries them she will surely like them because they have far better flavor than what she will find at the grocery.  And finally, was she aware that the grocery store eggs can be well over a month old by the time she buys them?

She gives me a hesitant look, and I realize that I’m loosing her as a customer… so I quickly blurt, “If you bring me your carton back for me to refill it will give you .25 cents off of your next dozen!”

To which she replies “How much do ya’ll want for your eggs?”

I caved.  I told her, “For you $2.00 after the discount.”

At that, she pried open her handbag and peeled two dollars out of her wallet to hand to me.

I have not seen her again and its been two weeks.  Maybe she just doesn’t eat that many eggs?

Who can say?

In the meantime I have found an outlet for my surplus eggs!  I am selling them at the Farmers Co-op downtown!  So OK, I am still not getting rich, but at least I am selling all of my eggs now!   And that’s a happy thing!  “:<>

Here’s an update!

Yesterday the lady I told you about (above) came back to buy another dozen eggs.  This was nice!  But what made it spectacular was that she has reserved in advance three dozen for the 8th of August!

“Nah remembuh…” she reminds me, “… that’s three dozen on thuh 8th. of August.  I wanna send some home with mah friend who’s visiten from Nawth Caralina!”

I love this lady!

*  Click HERE to find out more information on the health benefits and differences of “Pastured” vs.  “Free Range” and “Factory Farm”  hen’s eggs.

My Summary of Summer…

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We are having the most perfect fall morning.  You know…  the one where the sky is just the right shade of blue, the sun makes everything shine, and the air is cool and clear.   I open the windows and breathe in deeply…  Thinking of Summer’s demise and the official start of fall the Equinox that will not arrive until “…03:09 (or 3:09am) Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on September 23, 2010…” officially speaking.  And that brings me to…

My Summary of Summer: or how I learned to survive and enjoy it in spite of the drought.

Yee-gads, what a summer it has been!  With fall preparations right around the corner I take these few moments to share with you.  So here it is.  The truth of it.

We’ve lost, gained, learned and grown, in our knowledge of gardening, critters and bees.  However, we found out essential things along the way.  For this is the importance of our lessons after all… that we have indeed learned from them.

Lessons such as:

  1. Hawks gotta eat.  We lost one Buff Polish rooster and a Guinea Hen to the hawks this summer.  We were very sad about it but out of 35 beaks we consider the losses minimal.
  2. Chickens don’t like snakes.  Well really, we knew that, but what we didn’t know was that they would actually chase them off the property!  Amazing to see!
  3. When vegetable gardening you need to plant about four times as much as you think you will need.  Why?  Because you need enough for you and the little squirrels and voles that love to nibble the bottoms off of every tomato, pepper, and bean within their reach.  You also need enough to feed all the squash bugs and tomato horn worms, and any other insect that comes by to dine!  And this is important… you need enough to share with the neighbors who graciously put up with the noise and flies that your menagerie will produce (no matter what you do to combat them)!  Although a dozen eggs now and again goes a long way to keeping them from complaining!  ;D
  4. Murphy’s Law – If there is a draught and you fix the pump and get it going, then the rain will come… in buckets and torrents!  AND  If stops raining again, then you will surely dig up the electric line that was buried shallowly in the soil and end up running a very long extension cord out to make it run again… yes REALLY!
  5. Bees, if properly housed and protected, can be quite self-sufficient and really need little else from me.  I pretty much leave them alone, they have plenty of their own stores to eat, are healthy, and show little evidence of dreaded intruders such as hive beetle, veroa mites and wax moths.  In fact, it would seem that my chickens do a very good job of breaking the cycle of the hive beetles, and I have seen no evidence of mites or wax moths.  Bees are very impressive little critters!

All in all I feel that difficulties we faced were minor, the knowledge we have gained was invaluable, and this winter will allow us to do quite a bit to be more prepared for next spring and summer!

Things we need to do between now and next spring are:

  1. Build the geese an outside hut for sleeping in.  Right now they are being shepherded into the barn each night.  They need a little home of their own!
  2. Build a cold frame for starting seeds.
  3. Build a potting table (done!!!) with an old kitchen sink in it.  It will be useful for transplanting seedlings into newspaper cups and placing picked fruits and vegetables up off the ground so the chickens can’t peck them.  Oh the sink?  Well that will be a good place to wash the soil off of everything before I bring it into the house.
  4. Build a garden bench to sit and rest a spell while I contemplate work that needs doin’,  to look at all I have accomplished, and to take  a moment now and again to be grateful for all I have been blessed with!

Were you blessed this summer?  Perhaps you might take a moment to write a comment and share your blessings with other readers?

I hope so!

Lynda

P.S.  I’ve a bit of humor to share with you before I close.

 

WHAT’S ALL THE COMMOTION ABOUT?

Why, its Lil’ Bit on the prowl!

Now…  how could you possibly be afraid of that?