Color Surprises

We have over 40 heritage breed hens. From Rhode Island Reds to Black Copper Marans, with a Golden Laced Wyandotte in the middle. I could continue, but you get the point. With all of the different breeds we have a beautiful array of egg shell colors. We actually purchase specific breeds of chickens based on their bloodlines and their God given abilities to produce certain colors.

The question that we often get is “Do chickens really lay green and blue eggs?” Yes they do! When it comes to egg shell colors, it really all depends on the genetics of the hen. For example an all white bird, like the commercially used White Leghorns, produce white or off white eggs. While a darker breed, like our Reds will lay a brown egg. The bluish green one pictured above and the solid olive one were produced by a Cream Legbar and an Olive Egger. We are planning to add more of these hens to our flock this year through breeding.

We always try to keep a good color variety. We find these eggs are especially popular with parents who have young children. Of course you can always get a solid brown carton too.

With the warmer days, the hens are increasing their eggs daily. So grab yours today!

Summertime Flashback

The hens are tired of the brown grass, cooler temps, and the lack of goodies to forage for. Plus we are over this season of molting and BUYING eggs from the grocery store. Now don’t get me wrong, we understand why this happens and we definitely don’t use artificial light. We want our hens to have their rest.

So instead we’re turning back time to the summer where the organic treats were tasty and abundant. Plus the eggs were plenty!

Don’t worry chickens…….Spring is almost here. Now we need to tell ourselves that too! 😉

Winter Treats

What do you do when you have an excess of collards? You share!! That is exactly what happened here when one of our neighbors who gardens organically, was nice enough to bring over 2 full bags of collards last season. There were so many that we decided to mix up a batch of one of our winter staple chicken treats! Here you have some BOSS (aka blacked oiled sunflower seeds), organic kale, oats, and collards. The chickens love this mix. We will trade out the greens for whatever we’re growing so this recipe could be with organic cabbage, broccoli leaves, spinach, chard, etc. The chickens are just happy to eat it and we’re left with the satisfaction of knowing that happy chickens produce tasty eggs!

Egg Update

After a huge molt and the winter blues, our layers had decided to pay their rent again until recently. With the unusually low temperatures and the SNOW some received here, our girls decided it was time to go on strike again. We have been loading them up with protein and all things good for them to help them out, so more eggs soon!