The Farm: Eggs!

Besides having a monstrous house-project to work on, Cory and I keep ourselves plenty busy with our small menagerie of animals. One of the reasons that the Mayhew House was so attractive was the decent sized barn on the property. We keep a bull Jersey calf named Reuben, a spoiled pygmy goat named Abby, two pigs, four rabbits who are Lola, Raven, Reese and Snickers as well as a variety of poultry including to peafowl, a guinea and some chickens.

I have wanted animals, chickens in particular, since I was a little girl. Somehow the idea of being able to go to your backyard and gather fresh eggs always seemed so...satisfying. So rewarding.

In March of 2012 we bought 14 chicken chicks (aka. chicken nuggets), but lost the majority of them when our dog got loose. The rest were picked off by predators until the only one we had left was Captain, our buff orpington rooster. Unfortunately, roosters can't lay eggs...actually, they don't really do much of anything.

But I still wanted eggs! So I began to troll Craigslist for a good deal on hens, but hey were all priced too high, or they were "soup hens" - hens that are too old to be great egg-layers, and apparently make for good cooking! After a few days of searching, I finally got lucky and...

Last weekend I purchased ten silver laced wyandotte hens from a small-scale farming family about an hour East of where we live. The hens are 21 months old, making them mature and ready to lay eggs! Of course, if you know anything about chickens, you'll know that their egg-laying is affected by many different factors - including daylight. Minnesota winters have an abundance of cold and a shortage of daylight.

We got pretty lucky though! They have been laying, just a few eggs, but that's more than zero! Come spring they should be laying about 7-10 eggs per day between the ten of them! Let's just say we, along with family and friends, should be pretty well stocked in the egg department!

Here's our first egg! (It's kind of cute if you ask me!)