The Double Yolker

In all three hundred odd eggs that our hens have so far laid we've been treated to two double yolks, both laid by Pepper.

I had always assumed that a double yolked egg would be indistinguishable from its counterparts until cracked - but so far this has not been the case. On both occasions Pepper has laid eggs that are decidedly bigger than her normal ones. Let me show you what I mean:

I know I've shown you pictures that look like this before, and they've been one bantam, one regular egg - so for a sense of scale lets bring one of Frog's eggs into the picture too:

Are you starting to get a sense of scale yet - these eggs are pretty big! Inside they look a little like this:

A great topping to pizza for two - shame about the broken yolk.

Lovely!

The Broody Hen

It was inevitable really. Some breeds of hen are better know for being broody than others, and our four all fit into this category. None more so than our two Orpington's and Lemon has decided that it is definitely time to live up to this stereotype.

I got home from work on Wednesday to find that we only had three hens wandering around the run. Lemon was settled in the nest box. I lifted her up to fetch any eggs that had been laid to discover that she wasn't trying to lay - but was sitting on three eggs (including one of her own). Both her tummy and the three eggs were surprisingly warm. Alarm bells went off inside my head.

From this point we started a little battle. I would take her out of the nest box and encourage her to join the others in exploring the garden. She would wander round outside for a bit and then disappear back inside again. On Thursday afternoon I shut her out of the nest box for a few hours. She didn't seem phased by this at all, but returned to her dark corner within minutes of me opening the pop hole.

So it came to drastic action. We decided to try and break her of this bout of broodiness. A hens determination to sit on some eggs can often lead to illness from refusing to leave the nest to eat or drink and we didn't want it to go this far.

As far as I can tell there are a few methods of doing this and all centre on cooling the hen down. Her hormones will raise her temperature to help keep the eggs toasty, so by cooling her down you trigger the end of this process - as if she'd left the nest of her own accord.

A popular method is to put them in a separate cage (like the sort of thing used during puppy training) and raise it off the ground so that there's a cool air flow all around. You'll probably need to do this for a week or so. We don't have such a cage, so skipped that one and moved onto an easier option.

We planted ice cubes in the next box. I'd love to have seen her reaction when she first discovered them. As far as we can tell she probably sat on them for most of the day, she was certainly still there that evening. The nest box was a soggy mess and we were all ready for a repeat the next day.

However, to our relief she showed no signs at all of wanting to spend the following day sitting on eggs and all was back to normal. Ice 1: Lemon 0. I hope we don't have to repeat this too many times over the summer.

Aren't we missing something?

Ah, yes, that's right. A shell.

I know its hard to see from the egg in the picture, but this egg doesn't have a shell. In fact the texture resembles something like a stress ball - though I didn't poke it too much as I didn't want to break it. This is the first egg we've had that's looked something like this.

The most confusing thing about this is that we had two in the same day. One egg from Pepper, one egg from Lemon and two shell-less eggs - one of which split the moment we tried to move it. The remaining shell-less egg was the same size as the eggs from the two larger hens - rather than being bantam sized. I'm not sure on the odds of getting our first two at once - but I'm guessing they would have been slim.

My hope is that at least one of these two was Fizzy's first egg as its not uncommon for a first egg to be shell-less. The other - who knows!

I have two theories. The first is that either Pepper or Lemon got rather confused and tried to lay two eggs in one day, and therefore didn't have time to put a shell on the second (the shell is the last part of the "egg making" process). The other theory is that when a bantam egg is not constrained by a shell it looks larger than it normally would, and that the second egg is therefore Frog's.

Of course, its quite possibly for both these theories to be true, and for Fizzy to still not have laid an egg. We'll have to watch and wait, and see what happens next.

Infographical Egg Log

As a finally summary to February's egg log I have made an infographic. For those not familiar with the term try popping it into google and looking at the image results - essentially its a way of taking some dry information or statistics and representing it in a clear, and often fun manner.

Sorry about the long wait on this one. I spent a while trying to do this from scratch - but came to the conclusion that I am no graphic designer, and so turned to the web where I found infogr.am, who very kindly provided my with the tools I needed to produce a simple infographic. Here is the result:

THE EGG LOG Egg Laying Egg Eating | Infographics

Cranking up production

Our hens have been laying eggs like clockwork for the last couple of months. Frog lays for four consecutive days, and then has a day off, whereas Lemon favours a three days on, one day off approach. Pepper has been a little more erratic, tending to lay for six or seven days before taking a break. Fizzy, of course, has yet to lay anything.

And so imagine my surprise over the last week when my egg log looked like this:

That's right - seven consecutive days from both Frog and Lemon. Each day I went outside expecting to get no eggs, and each day there were another three waiting for me! Maybe they think spring is finally here?

What a palaver!

Our hens are very good at laying their eggs in the next boxes. Once they get the hang of egg laying they don't lay them anywhere else - which is great for us - it means we don't end up scrabbling around trying to work out where they've put them now.

There is one exception to this good news and that is when we need to clean out the coop. This weekend we were due a lot of rain, so I decided to take advantage of a couple of sunny hours on Saturday morning to get the coop all clean and tidy and ship shape ready for another week. We let the hens loose in the garden which is usually quite enough distraction and took apart the hen house.

The coop we bought is really useful as the floor of the main coop removes completely, as do the perches, but it means that once we start cleaning the nest boxes are inaccessible. Lemon decided that this was the moment that she needed to lay an egg. Now. When Pepper or Frog is in this position they tend to hover near the coop with their legs crossed until they can get inside again. Lemon is not this subtle about life. She made a racket and a half. Initially I ignored her, egg laying is not as quick as you'd think and I wanted to get the coop sorted before the rain came. But she kept squawking and squawking and squawking. In the end we quickly sorted the nest boxes and reassembled the not-yet-clean coop to allow her access.

To be fair to her, she did pop straight inside, was quiet, and came out again a couple of minutes later. But she hadn't laid an egg. A moment later she was back inside, and then back out again, and she still hadn't laid an egg. This went on for 20 minutes. In the end it took midwife Pepper to pop in and talk her through it. Finally I thought. Except that they didn't then come back out to enjoy the grass, but decided to both sit in the same nest box on top of the egg. I really hope that this isn't the early sign of a broody hen.

In the end I chucked the two of them out, collected the egg and finally got the rest of the coop clean. What a palaver!

Task complete!

Today is the last day of my 'Egg Log'. Throughout February I have logged which hens laid each day, what time of day we found the eggs, and how we used them. I've found it an interesting process. There have been a few pleasant surprises - such as Lemon laying her first eggs - and I've started to spot a few patterns in what was going on which pleases me greatly.

At its peak we had 16 eggs sitting on our kitchen side waiting to be used (and with three hens laying it seems this is going to be a more common sight).

I'm going to leave the raw data on the Egg Log for a while (probably until I think of a better use for the space), but I have also decided to have a go at distilling all the information into info-graphic format. I've never done anything like this before - so watch this space. I'm going to need some time to think of different ways to represent the stats - and then even more time to acheive what I have in my head on paper!

In the mean time, I'm going to celebrate the end of the egg logging process with a little challenge for each of you readers. You have a whole stack of available data to analyse, extrapolate, stare at or ignore at your peril! The question is this:

How many eggs will be laid on the 4th March, and by which hens?

Answers below by midnight on 3rd March, and I'll contemplate the concept of prizes. Have fun :)

You want me to do WHAT?

On Tuesday this week three eggs were laid. That's right, you heard me, three. Two in the nest box where any sensible hen would lay them, and one out in the open. The third egg is similar in size to those we've been collecting from Pepper and, therefore, I do declare Lemon has started to lay eggs. What a nice hen.

Two days later I was getting ready for work and heard a commotion outside. Pepper was making quite a lot of noise, which isn't unheard of but is normally for a reason. We'd already collected a Pepper egg that morning, so these couldn't be celebratory clucks. I went to investigate.

It turns out that Pepper was only making a small portion of the noise. Lemon, on the other hand was in the coop making what I can only describe as "what the hell is my body doing to me" sorts of clucks. Think woman in labour and you wouldn't be far wrong. I left her to it, hoping that I was correct in thinking she was laying an egg, rather than anything more sinister.

Thursdays eggs.
Top to bottom: Lemon, Frog, Pepper

We've noticed before the distinct difference in how noisy the different breeds of chicken are. Frog, quiet and placid, rarely clucks at all, Pepper can be a little noisy at times. Fizzy and Lemon however, are both Orpingtons, and this turns out to be a much more vocal breed of chicken. Whether they are nervous, scared, excited, being bossy, or just letting you know the news from the coop, these two don't shut up. The variety of noises they make is great but hopefully once they get used to laying their daily eggs we won't be treated to the melodramatic squawks we had that morning too often.

When I checked for eggs again that evening there were two more waiting for me. Add them to the one egg collected in the morning, and I'd call that success.

Do you have any melodramatic pets? I'd love to hear your stories.

Keeping track

In order to satisfy the geek in me I have decided to make a note of which hen lays each day, and what we use the eggs for - for one month. I'm also slightly hopeful that over the month we might start getting eggs from more than just two hens too, for bonus points.

You'll be able to keep track with me by clicking on the Egg Log tab up at the top there ^. Maybe once I'm done I'll try and draw some "scientific" conclusions. I hope that someone else might find interest in this, but completely understand if its just me!

So for now all there is to say is that I'm starting this process off with 9 eggs on the rack and 1 egg collected this morning.

St Clements Curd

Now we have two hens that are regularly laying eggs I find myself wondering about all sorts of imaginative ways to use them. We've had spaghetti carbonara, Yorkshire puddings, poached eggs and omelettes but we'd probably have done all of those anyway. I fear that in a very short time we'll be fed up of poached/boiled/fried/scrambled eggs if we don't quickly expand our egg recipe repertoire . Joe has recently been learning to make crème patisserie and eggs seems to disappear by the dozen when he gets going on a cooking spree which definitely helps the cause!

What I'm really looking for are recipes that use eggs in a way that doesn't leave them looking like eggs. Cakes of all kinds are a great example of this, and one of my favourites at the moment is this spiced apple cake. I found this recipe on a website called Tastespotting. I enjoy baking and often find myself browsing the brilliant site that is Tastespotting for inspiration. Tastespotting brings together recipes from food bloggers around the world and they're picky in what they allow to appear, so you can guarantee that recipes that tickle your fancy will be clearly laid out and accompanied by photos that lure you into just having to give them a go.

Another recent find was this recipe for St Clements Curd. It seemed fairly simple to make, we had all the ingredients in the house and it used six eggs for a win! As it didn't seem to last too long (two weeks in a cupboard, or four in a fridge according to the recipe) I decided to just make a half batch to see how it came out - if it proved moreish and disappeared quickly then, I reasoned, I could always make more.

As it happens, it is very tasty and has a good zinginess to it. Being orange and lemon curd I keep veering between whether I would rather it was more lemony or not, but I will definitely be making something like this again. Its just a question of whether I go hunting for similar recipes - or start to tweak this one.

What are your favourite egg based recipes?

Mystery egg-layer number two

Good things all come at once right? Not only did we have a Christmas day egg from the lovely Pepper, who has continued to lay an egg about once a day ever since, but we have also had a couple of eggs that are certainly not Pepper's. These are much smaller and are almost certainly laid by one of the two bantams, but which - we do not know!

Will the mystery egg-layer please step forward...
Frog or Fizzy? Any guesses?

A surprise present

We were all ready for Christmas, everything was in place. We had logs for the wood burner, Christmas dinner prepped (shh, don't tell the girls we had chicken). The presents were all wrapped and the tree was decorated with fairy lights and baubles. We'd been to church three times in the previous two days - with the Christmas Day service still to come! And that's when we found the surprise...

Joe went out to see to the chickens on Christmas Day morning, and came back looking a little shocked and quite smug.

As regular readers of this blog will know, we got our girls 4.5 months ago, at which point they were 15 weeks old. As they reached point of lay the weather turned particularly cold and as such we have failed to get a single egg from them. Our Christmas miracle, therefore, is very simple. Our first egg.


Update: We found a second on Boxing Day, we could get used to this :)

An egg, an egg, my kingdom for an egg!

I'm sure you are all wondering why I have yet to mention eggs on this blog. A little unusual for a blog about keeping chickens I'll grant you. The girls are now 24 weeks old. They could have started laying at anything from 20 weeks old. Could.

This means that for the last month we have been watching and waiting for our first egg. Every sign of unusual behaviour has had us hoping. There was the night when Pepper decided that instead of going to bed she was going to walk round in circles clucking. Surely that is a sign of a hen about to lay her first egg? Apparently not. All our waiting and hoping has been in vain, and to date we have had no eggs. You heard me; no eggs.

Instead they have decided to moult. This in itself is confusing. An adult bird will moult fully once a year during the autumn - but not in its first year, so ours shouldn't be doing that this time. The other option is that this is the last of the partial moults they are supposed to do before they reach adulthood. They should be too old for this but it seems to be more likely than the first option as none of them have lost large quantities of feathers on this pass.

Whatever the reason for the moult, no hen will lay while she is trying to regrow feathers so it seems we'll have to wait a little longer. We have one more problem though; most hens will reduce laying a lot over the winter months with some stopping all together. Our hopes for eggs before spring are therefore seeming more and more far-fetched.

Pepper seems to have finished moulting for now, having regrown all of her beautiful tail feathers so maybe she will soon grace us with an egg or two. Or maybe she'll decide that the weather has been too miserable and she can't be bothered... we'll have to wait and see!

To the chicken keepers among you... has anyone else had a spring chicken not lay before its first winter?