Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

[Bens-Hens]

Hahaha, thats right, chicks certainly don't count!

Lucky witht eh dogs Felix. We know someone with flighty birds and they have not learned that life is better on their side of the fence...or maybe it isn't and the owners have not learned?! I am sure thats not the case in your yard though!

Fancy, Muffin does look like a Tiger, and Miffin is kind of camo too, so I can see the appeal

 

[scottcaddy]

I am trying to give it away on Facebook and people were asking if it was friendly. I think the "I'm trapped in a cage and don't like it" look is a hard sell lol.

SInce I gave it some attention though it has gotten attached.

Well then, the boys should be trying out names to see what sounds good eh? Have fun!!

Scott

 

[vehve]

Veera did it again! Yesterdays egg was 30g, today's was 29g (I hope this isn't the way the weight will develop). We ceremoniously shared our first egg in the morning with Karin. I fried it in bacon fat. Here's a picture of it together with some organic store bought eggs. The bought eggs had a best before date of 7.7. so they were probably laid about two weeks ago. You can't really see in this picture, but the color difference on the yolks was enormous. The bought eggs had a nice dark yellow with a slight orange tinge, but our own egg had a really rich orange color. The taste was amazing too, too bad it was a bit on the small side. There was a slight bloodspot resembling thing in there, but it wasn't on the yolk, it was attached to it but still a bit separate from it. Just out of interest, how exactly can I tell if the eggs are fertilized? Our head roo has been jumping the girls, but I would assume that at 14 weeks he would still be shooting blanks. He's a bit of a rapy *******... *Edit that word was supposed to describe a child born out of wedlock. I don't find it to be any worse then a reference to a female dog, but apparently I'm a bit of a foulmouth... *



Here's egg number two, seems like Veera prefers a mid day laying rhythm. Karin missed it again, because she had to go operate a pyometra on a rottweiler

She was bummed out.


Today it's time to clean the coop for the first time, will be interesting to see what we find among the bedding. I also got in touch with a hemp bedding producer, they're not selling commercially yet, but he seemed open to the idea of conducting a small scale chicken bedding trial with their domestically grown product in about a month. It would be nice to find an affordable source for hemp, right now you can only get it imported at 24 euros for 150 litres (14 kilos), and that just isn't a manageable price. Peat is really nice, but I'm a bit worried about all the dust. And i don't like pine shavings that much, because they decompose so slowly. Sand isn't really an option either, since it would be so cold in winter.

 

[Fancychooklady]

Felix your shop bought eggs must be better than ours. Apparently the eggs can be stored for up to a month before they make it to the shops and once there they label them with a further month of shelf life. I just recently had to do this research for a friend of mine that had been convinced by her dad( use to own a battery hen operation 20 years ago ) that fertile eggs were full of meat spots and therefore didn't have a very long shelf life.
What a load of hogwash!

http://www.minkhollow.ca/mhf/doku.php?id=farm:eggs_for_eating

 

[vehve]

Felix your shop bought eggs must be better than ours. Apparently the eggs can be stored for up to a month before they make it to the shops and once there they label them with a further month of shelf life. I just recently had to do this research for a friend of mine that had been convinced by her dad( use to own a battery hen operation 20 years ago ) that fertile eggs were full of meat spots and therefore didn't have a very long shelf life.

What a load of hogwash!

http://www.minkhollow.ca/mhf/doku.php?id=farm:eggs_for_eating

EU regulations allow a best before date that is 28 days from laying. I don't know how well it's followed (just look at the horse meat scandal a few years back), but Finns are notoriously law-abiding people... I would still be comfortable eating eggs months after that date, although the taste and texture does suffer quite a bit.

Why would the presence of semen affect shelf life? Sure, you'll have a hard time hatching them, but other than that I can't understand that logic.

Another thing that speaks for the freshness of store bought eggs here, is that we had a batch of 4 in the incubator when we began our chicken adventure. Out of those, one quit day 7, one day 12 and the last two made it all the way to day 20 before quitting. I'm guessing the eggs were about 2 weeks old when they went to the incubator, so that's why they didn't make it all the way, but people usually report about a 20% hatch rate on store bought organic eggs.

 

[Bens-Hens]

Your store boughts must simply have roo's in the flock.

Here, they are infertile due to no roo's, and I'm pretty sure I read here they have 6 weeks to sell, so even if they were fertile they would not 'activate' at that age and start to grow.

As for how to tell, there is a good thread on here with pics, but in layman's terms, if the white spot found in the yolk is solid it is infertile, if it looks like a bullseye, with rings then it is fertile.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures

Here is another link, once you have seen a few yolks you can pick it, but you need to either test incubate or open the egg to know for sure.

http://naturalchickenkeeping.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/how-to-tell-if-your-chicken-eggs-are.html


Congrats on your second egg! Depends on what the breed is, but most will gain in size. Our Araucana still lay on the small size, but thats the breed, where our large egg layers are doing quite well. Our LS and BA would crack the 60g mark in their first year no sweat. Looks like our Wellie and Barnevelder will be close to that too.

 

[vehve]

Ben, yes there are roo's in the flocks. I simply meant that the eggs were still semi-viable, so they could not be much older than two weeks.

I'll start looking for bulls-eyes then.

Hopefully they'll gain size to the 50g range, even 45 would be ok, but 30 is a bit on the small side. The EE mutt came in a 37g egg, so she might lay pretty small one's, although her daddy is a BCM, so I'm hoping that will increase the size a bit.

 

[vehve]

Since Ben is too busy cuddling with his chicks (and getting attached to his new cat), I will continue to bore you with what we have been up to.

Today was coop cleanup day. The bedding would of been ok to use still, but since we first started to put leftovers in there, we wanted to get them out to avoid potential future problems. Hopefully this wont have to happen for a long time again, because the first compartment of my compost is up to the brim now. Karin did a quick scrub in there, I think it turned out quite nice.

It was nice to see that my choice of floor material is keeping up to par.

The hemp manufacturer got back to me, they would be ready to deliver in a month. Only problem is, their smallest size is a cubic meter of the stuff. I just used about a hundred liters to fill the coop, and I'm expecting to go about 3 months between bedding changes, if not more. Where on earth am I supposed to store a cubic meter of bedding?

Ben, I think we're in need of some more chick pictures again. And what name did you settle on for the cat?

 

[Fancychooklady]

Cuddles.

 

[Fancychooklady]

Since Ben is too busy cuddling with his chicks (and getting attached to his new cat), I will continue to bore you with what we have been up to. Today was coop cleanup day. The bedding would of been ok to use still, but since we first started to put leftovers in there, we wanted to get them out to avoid potential future problems. Hopefully this wont have to happen for a long time again, because the first compartment of my compost is up to the brim now. Karin did a quick scrub in there, I think it turned out quite nice. It was nice to see that my choice of floor material is keeping up to par. The hemp manufacturer got back to me, they would be ready to deliver in a month. Only problem is, their smallest size is a cubic meter of the stuff. I just used about a hundred liters to fill the coop, and I'm expecting to go about 3 months between bedding changes, if not more. Where on earth am I supposed to store a cubic meter of bedding? Ben, I think we're in need of some more chick pictures again. And what name did you settle on for the cat?

Nice coop. We used Lino too, best thing we ever did. I put hay under the perches and simply remove once a week.