One of our Barred Rock hens started laying about two weeks ago. Bask in the glory of the first egg (it was pouring rain, so this was taken inside):
The first egg
A couple of days ago, another hen started laying as well. She dropped a couple while she was on the perch and they cracked on the floor of the chook house. “Silly chook,” is such a perfect phrase, isn’t it? Oh well, she has figured out how the nesting boxes work now.
How do the eggs taste? As you might expect, they’re absolutely delicious. The yolks are a deep, saturated orange/yellow.
It’s hard to put into words how satisfying it is to be eating these eggs. Keeping chickens has been a dream of mine for a long time. As I toiled in the depths of my last corporate job in the U.S., I used a picture of some chooks in a field as the wallpaper image on my screen. Thinking about having chickens helped me make it through the day, believe it or not.
I should order a large print of that egg, frame it and hang it up proudly in our lounge. HAHA.
Why not celebrate your egg?! A dream realized is a beautiful thing. I’m sure I’ll feel the same way about my first taste of honey from my own soon-to-be deployed beehive.
@Melanie
Bees! Honey! How exciting. It’s definitely on my “to-do-someday” list.
@Kevin, when you get the bee bug, look into Top Bar Hives. Cheaper and easier to deal with than Langstroth boxes. That is what we are doing.
Congratulations on the eggs. I remember when I came back from a two day trip about a year and a half ago to find those first pullet eggs. On top of the better taste and nutrition, it’s nice to not have to worry about getting sick when the giant, disgusting battery laying operations turn out hundreds of millions of tainted eggs.
I’ve read a little bit about those top bar hives. They sure do seem to be more user friendly than the box variety. My wife’s not to keen on bees, but I’m trying to warm her up to the idea of meat chickens next spring.
I’m delighted to have found your blog while surfing around looking for information on composting toilets in NZ, I actually hit one of your old posts. We presently live in Sydney, Australia but still have a property in Otago (there is a bit about it on my blog under the label Real World Cottage)which we used to live in accompanied by 6 chooks and a couple of cats. At the moment we only get to enjoy it for a month or so each summer but in coming retirement times we’ll probably back for longer. With that in mind we’re thinking about upgrading our toilet and grey water systems, hence the ‘research’.
Its the egg moon!!!! Thank you for this beautiful blog guys, always looking forward to your next posts! Aurelie from Kingston, Otago.
Hi,
No doubt you guys get the WAPF journal, but in case you don’t have the latest one (and for people who don’t get it or know of the journal section on their site), there’s a good article on chickens as omnivores:
http://www.westonaprice.org/farm-a-ranch/1971-chickens-are-omnivores-its-no-dilemma.html
I bought some “free-range” eggs from a local vegetarian-inspired urban farm recently, and the yolks were very pale. No surprise when I realised that they probably push their vegetarian values on the poor animals, as well.
Hope all’s well!
Beautiful egg. Nice to see the rain outside. We are down South and it has dried up so fast down here.
Lovely news of a new healthy baby too. Enjoy.