Sunday 19th March 2017
Eggs - lots of them!!
Winter continues and quite wisely, the four ladies in the barn are hanging on to their offspring for the moment!
We are seriously chuffed with all our eggs just now: chuffed as in loving the fabulous array of colours and the even more fabulous taste, now that the birds are properly ‘free-range’ again. We do however have too many still - we are trying to sell a few more of last year’s POL (Point of Lay) but Jack ‘may’ not be trying quite as hard as she ought on this one! Her excuse: they are just way too pretty to sell PLUS we are getting so many fabulous egg colours from our cross-breeding, it would be a shame not to have such a lovely range.
Having the ‘right’ number of chickens in order to have the right number of eggs is a problem for most smallholders. We currently have 23 laying birds and at the moment we are getting at least a dozen eggs a day, and rising!!. Our birds are a variety of ages: the newbies (POL) born last year and just coming into lay, are prolific and lay most days. The older girls, some now five or six, are not so prolific. Our Red Leghorn who we have mentioned before lays for about 1 month a year!! We have no idea why?
Trouble is that come the winter when the days get shorter again, some birds will slow down and some will stop altogether and then we may not have enough!!! At the moment we are giving boxes away to friends and visitors and the dogs have them several times a week too: they are VERY good food for dogs.
Chickens are born with thousands of ova – and it is these which eventually become eggs so the number they lay is, in theory, pre-determined. Not quite sure how that works as far as our Red Leghorn is concerned mind you. Leghorns are meant to lay around 300 eggs in their first year. Ours laid a tenth of that!!
Our cockerel plans are progressing, more on this tomorrow (or day after if we kid or lamb by then…)
We are seriously chuffed with all our eggs just now: chuffed as in loving the fabulous array of colours and the even more fabulous taste, now that the birds are properly ‘free-range’ again. We do however have too many still - we are trying to sell a few more of last year’s POL (Point of Lay) but Jack ‘may’ not be trying quite as hard as she ought on this one! Her excuse: they are just way too pretty to sell PLUS we are getting so many fabulous egg colours from our cross-breeding, it would be a shame not to have such a lovely range.
Trouble is that come the winter when the days get shorter again, some birds will slow down and some will stop altogether and then we may not have enough!!! At the moment we are giving boxes away to friends and visitors and the dogs have them several times a week too: they are VERY good food for dogs.
Chickens are born with thousands of ova – and it is these which eventually become eggs so the number they lay is, in theory, pre-determined. Not quite sure how that works as far as our Red Leghorn is concerned mind you. Leghorns are meant to lay around 300 eggs in their first year. Ours laid a tenth of that!!
Our cockerel plans are progressing, more on this tomorrow (or day after if we kid or lamb by then…)