EGGS!!!!

Welcome autumnprairie! I see it's your first post. Looking forward to many more from you and getting to know you and all about your garden.

Mary

autumnprairie said:

I try to check before my beagle gets them from the stable. My hens free range so sometimes it's fun trying to find them all. Not all my hens like the best boxes.

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Welcome, welcome, welcome, @autumnprairie! I'm happy to see a new member now, during the down garden months. We do tend to talk about more than gardening this time of year, but we also spend lots of time planning, plotting, and starting seedlings for transplanting outside when the weather is suitable.

Tell us more about you and your gardening experience and challenges. We're a nosy, helpful lot.

Congrats on the EGGS!!! I know what your chickens mean to you and those first eggs are marvelous!

I had happy girls up to 18 that could lay had bakers dozen and a big blue ouch

ChickenGrass said:

Wooden!
They look real,
The bottom green one is the colour,
Of my cream legbar eggs.

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I thought Cream Legbars laid blue eggs? They are charging over $30.00 here for a Cream Legbar cihick!

We ate the eggs! and they were just perfect!
Nice dark yolks!

autumnprairie said:

I try to check before my beagle gets them from the stable. My hens free range so sometimes it's fun trying to find them all. Not all my hens like the best boxes.

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I have a sign above the nest box, it seems to help. But, not all chickens can read.

Cute and , rebbetzin! I wish my girls did a better job of listening to me.

That is a GREAT feeling!!! I felt the same, this winter, bc my incubation was a bust last year, so I have 5 EE's that are going on 3yo and my (two freebie) Silver Lace Wyandottes finally broke to two month egg drought in December. (SLW's lay brown eggs, so you can tell.) This morning I had two brown eggs and 1 blue. I have PLENTY of friends who want any leftover eggs, and my DD's eat a lot of HB's ones, too.
Have you heard about the new breed that lays super blue eggs, yet?
https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/whiting_true_blue.html
Speaking of incubating, I turned a 100 gallon steel water tank (had a leak) into my brooder. I have always been wary about using a heat lamp in my barn, and got REALLY spooked when my friend told me that Her friend burned her barn down by knocking a lamp over!
Anyway, my ~6' x 12' tool shed used to be a chicken house at one time. There is even a screen door inside of the outside door made of painted hardware cloth. It has a cement floor and two outlets, and I'm moving my brooder in THERE this Spring to be safer. I am pretty much the only one who uses it, so I can keep my cats away from the "fuzzy eggs", as they like to call baby chicks.
Don't know if it bothers you, but I butcher my--- own chickens. The taste is so much different from store bought. People argue about this---I believe that they mix sawdust with feed to stretch it and keep chicken cheap--but I KNOW what my birds eat. I prefer to incubate myself and since you always have 2/3 roosters, I like to butcher them at 2-3 months old and send to "freezer camp." After a year the birds get tougher except if you take them right after a molt. Still, older birds need to be cooked longer and lower.
I love my SLW's!! They can be handled, but they handle take heat and cold better than my EE's and better than the RIR's that I used to keep. Plus they don't take any guff from the roosters.
(Both RIR hens and roosters are aggressive!)

Have you every heard of these black chickens?
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/ayam-cemani-rare-chicken-breed-that-is.html