What the ?!?!?!

Question, where do rubber chickens come from?  Answer, from rubber eggs, of course.  Ah, of course.  Wait. What?  A rubber egg?  What the heck is that?  Well it turns out that is what you call it when a chicken lays an egg without a shell. 

Right about now, if you are like me, the questions just keep coming.  How does a chicken lay an egg without a shell?  Is this even normal?  Do I have a defective chicken?  What do I do with a shell-less egg?

It turns out, this is not uncommon for birds that are just beginning to lay eggs.  Today we are up to five hens laying, so production is growing and we are probably lucky this is the first of these we have seen.  As to how it’s done, I am not sure.  As to what to do with the egg, some say you can hard boil it and eat it.  While I am sure it has been done before, it is gross enough that I plan on tossing it and hoping for 5 with shells tomorrow.

My last question regards the relative ease of passing a rubber egg compared to a regular egg.  Tragically, I may never know the answer.

Andy

Pulling Their Weight

A belated happy Independence Day to all my patriotic readers out there.  Sorry for the delay between posts, but those of you who follow me on Twitter and Facebook probably are aware that we packed up and headed out to D.C.  for the 4th.  If you don’t follow me, why not?  Anyways, we had a spectacular time out in our nation’s capital with a day trip included up to Fort McHenry.  But all good things must come to an end and it was finally time to return to the homestead.

No sooner had we pulled in, but I went to check on the ladies.  Now, all along I have been planning on an end-of-July first egg, so it was without any particular anticipation that I opened the nesting boxes.  But what should I see when I went ahead and unlatched the boxes to check them?  A couple of beautiful brown eggs!!! 

Farm-fresh eggs!!!

I excitedly called the Web-Mistress to come check out our haul and brought the first harvest into the house.  Now there was a third egg found in the coop, but it didn’t look very well.  I haven’t done this before but I can only surmise that it may have been the first egg laid and the birds weren’t too sure what to do as it appeared a bit scratched up.  I am sure at this point I only have one bird laying, but hey, at least someone has figured out what her God given mission in life is.  And this proves that I don’t have eight roosters out there.

Between this and the way the garden took off while we were gone, I have truly been blessed.  How has God blessed you this summer?

Andy

Guilty Pleasures

As I believe I mentioned before, watching the chickens fight over food never gets old.  So I am always looking for things to feed them.  This really does two things.  It lowers the cost of feeding these non-egg laying free loaders and it reduces the amount of trash headed to the landfill.  So, when breakfast was done and there was still a bit of cheesy eggs left on the plate, I began to wonder if the chickens could eat them.  Guess what?!  It turns out they can.  Man, does it feel wrong.  But not wrong enough to stop me from giving them a plate of eggs. 

Normally, the first chicken to see me coming with a plate food will try it and call the others over.  Not this time.  This greedy bird went to town on the eggs, barely pausing to breath.  Now, I saw another bird or two wandering over but never saw another bird eating.  What I do know is that unlike watermelon rinds which lasted the better part of a day, scrambled eggs last less than five minutes.  These birds have no shame!

Andy

Ornamental Chickens

The ring on the left isn't as nice as the one on the right but costs the same.

Since this blog purports to be about chickens, let me introduce you to my flock.  We picked up eight chicks from Tractor Supply Company in early March that were labeled pullets.  Funny thing, I haven’t seen any eggs yet.  So what I really bought were glorified lawn ornaments.  Given what I have spent building their coop and run, I am currently producing the most expensive compost around.  When August rolls around and they allegedly start laying, I will give them credit for pulling their own weight.  Until then, though, they are merely helping my four year old fulfill his lifelong (I know, right) dream of becoming a “chicken farmer”.

Now, we went with TSC chicks because, never having done this before, it seemed best to not pay a whole lot for each bird.  I mean, should they all have just up and died I would rather be in for $10 rather than $40.  I will admit I was probably too invested in their survival.  Between the stressing over every degree of movement in the temperature being read out on the digital thermometer and the countless trips to the garage to check on the babies, you would have thought I was running a NICU ward.  I finally had to remind myself that people have been raising chickens for thousands of years with much less technology and I should probably relax.

So we will see what sort of eggs these eventually produce.  As best I can tell, we bought Isa Brown chickens.  Anyone have any favorite layers I should consider for next time?