After years of getting a bad rap health experts now consider eggs a healthy and nutritious food.  Eggs are just another in a long line of foods that people ate for generations until some genius decided they were bad for us only to reverse their findings years later.  Eggs are a healthy and nutritious addition to ones diet.  Eggs contain a bit of almost every nutrient we need.  Depending on what the hens are fed the eggs can be high in Omega-3 fatty acids which lower your triglycerides.  While they are high in cholesterol they don’t negatively affect blood cholesterol in most people.  In fact they can actually raise your HDL or good cholesterol which lowers your chance of heart disease.  Eggs are very high in protein and all the essential amino acids we need.  Because eggs are so nutritious they leave you feeling full and satisfied after a meal so you will actually eat less which is good for weight loss.  We eat quite a few eggs at our house.  Many times we start our day with eggs for breakfast, then it’s egg salad sandwiches for lunch and a favorite dinner in the summer is fried egg and pepper sandwiches, or sometimes an egg and broccoli omelet.  BLT sandwiches are even better with an egg in the mix; I call them BELT sandwiches.  There are many ways of making good nutritious meals with eggs.  Our farm dog Tito enjoys a breakfast of a bowl of milk with a raw egg mixed in and his coat has never been shinier.

When it came time to buy a new flock of chicks we decided to buy them in the fall instead of the spring as we normally do.  Buying them in the spring means they usually aren’t laying until late summer as it normally takes about 20 weeks before they are mature enough to start laying.  The hens seem to just get laying good and then the shorter days and cooler temps arrive and the darn birds begin to slow down on their egg production.  By purchasing our new chicks last fall they have had all winter to grow and now that spring is here they are starting to lay and they should all be up to full production soon.  The hens started with the normal smaller “starter” eggs but  within just a few weeks have already begun to lay nice big eggs.  With previous flocks I’ve had this change take up to a month to happen.   Now the hens have all summer and fall to lay many more.  We’re hoping this will mean an increase in production for the first year.

This year we decided to go with Buff Orpingtons.  Buffs are a dual purposed breed originally developed in the UK.  They are good layers of light brown eggs and they are a friendly, gentle breed.  We’ve raised a few Buffs in the past and were well pleased with them so now we have a flock of 26.  When we ordered them from the hatchery they threw in a mystery chick that they said was a rare breed.  It turned out to be a Silver Leghorn rooster that I now call Fancy Pants as he is quite the looker.  He can stay around as long as he behaves himself and doesn’t start attacking me every time I go in the coop.  If he does he’ll meet the same fate as the last rooster who liked to attack me and who now resides in a canning jar.  So far Fancy Pants has been a gentleman.

This spring I started weeding out the old hens that weren’t laying from the ones that were.  Whenever I caught a hen in one of the nesting boxes I would attach a pink zip tie to her leg so I knew who was laying and who wasn’t when it came time to get rid of the slackers.  After butchering the old hens that weren’t laying we moved the rest of the older hens that were earning their keep into the bigger of our two coops.  We have about 40 of the older hens right now.  We moved the Buffs out of the brooder coop and into the smaller of the two chicken coops that easily holds the 26 hens plus Fancy Pants.  Everyone seems to be settling in to their respective accommodations and judging by the number of eggs I’m already getting from the Buffs they are quite happy.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jeanne

“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?”

Matthew 6:26