Saturday, March 5, 2011

Farm Fresh Eggs

Our chickens provide us with about a dozen fresh eggs a day.  Even now, in the wintertime!  I love eggs, and I love those chickens!  The chickens run around outside in the cold during the day, and we keep heatlamps in the coop so they can go inside and get warm if they wish.  It seems the five white chickens often can be found inside warming themselves.  They don't seem as tolerant to the cold as the darker-colored birds.  This just an observation of mine.  I assume it's because of the types of chickens they are.  We also keep a light on in the coop during the day, as it can get dark in there because it's not an open air coop.  The light and the heatlamps encourage egg production.


This day was a 10-egg-day.  Not a good egg day! 12 or 13 eggs is a good egg-day!

The two new birds, Luna and Virginia, have integrated into the flock and have started laying eggs in the nest boxes already.  They started laying right away, on the first evening we had them, one of them laid an egg.  They are both Americauna chickens and lay light greenish/blueish eggs.  And their eggs are large!  Many of our other chickens are bantams, so they lay small or medium sized eggs.  Our older chickens, who are older than a year, mostly lay medium and large eggs, and the pullets still lay small eggs and once in a while medium eggs.  As the pullets get older and more mature their eggs will probably be medium/large, too.

This week we got our first dozen eggs that we could label as LARGE.  Most of our cartons are labeled SMALL or MEDIUM.  I was so excited to have a large!  I had to save eggs from two days to have enough eggs to make a large.  But two-day-old eggs are not bad!  I imagine the eggs that other people buy in the store can be several weeks or even months old sometimes!  I have not bought eggs in several years, but I love to look at the eggs in the store.  They are so HUGE and white, it's amazing.  And the brown ones are so dark brown.  Other people in the store must think I'm strange when I stare at the store eggs and make comments about how funny they look!  Most of my chickens' eggs are light brown.

Just in case you don't know, in the US, the sizes of eggs are defined by the weight of a dozen eggs. They are not defined by the size of individual eggs.  Here's a quick chart I got from
http://www.sizes.com/food/chicken_eggs.htm

Size and Weight of a dozen eggs
Jumbo 30 ounces
Extra Large 27 ounces
Large 24 ounces
Medium 21 ounces
Small 18 ounces
Peewee 15 ounces


Light brown and green eggs - LARGE dozen
Now, I'm going to go have some eggs for breakfast!
Happy Saturday!

10 comments:

Knatolee said...

What beautiful eggs!

Chai Chai said...

I'm not sure I how lived so long without my own farm fresh eggs, it just seems so natural now.

Knatolee said...

Lynn, thanks so much for your response to my leg mite post! If you don't mind and when you get a chance, could you possibly tell me the name of the medication you use? BIG THANKS!!

Hubby is in D.C. right now at an APEC conference. We're coming down to Maryland at the end of August for a Bar Mitzvah... maybe we can meet up with Genny!

CaliforniaGrammy said...

Thanks for the egg-size lesson, I never thought the size of eggs was determined by weight rather than actual size. But it makes perfect sense now that I know! We're getting our first baby chicks soon and have to get going on building our own chicken coop. I'm so excited we'll finally have our own egg-producing hens!

Razzberry Corner said...

Chai, I agree, what did I do before?

Nat, oh, yes, we have to all get together! That would be so cool! I met up with Genny last year, you'll love her!! The cool thing is that Genny and I both now work for the same agency in DC! Its a small world!

Yeah, Gordon is in DC! Are u sure he's not in Houston, TX? I just googled apex conference 2011 and saw something about Houston... hope he can enjoy some local resteraunts while he's here. My fav is the MD crabcakes!

CA Grammy, I'm so excited about your chicks!!! Yeah for chicks! I luv chicks! Keep us posted with lots of pics!!! :)

Oh, Nat, I forgot, yes, I'll get back to you about the medicine. Right now we are out and about, I'm on my phone blogging...
-Lynn

Farm Girl said...

Very nice eggs! Right now I am able to give my daughter and daughter in law eggs plus keep us in eggs. It makes me so happy to be able to feed 3 families on just my hens.
I love chickens and your girls are so great.

Razzberry Corner said...

Kim, that is so great that 3 familes share your eggs!!! Pretty neat. Who doesn't love chickens?? What did we do without them before?

Terry said...

The eggs are beautiful!

Gail said...

I learned something new! I did not know the weight of a dozen determined the size, but it makes sense.

Your eggs are beautiful.

I imagine store eggs are weeks old and the reason some people get sick. The yellow is so pale compared to home grown.

Genny said...

We MUST get together when Knat comes to Maryland! I've never met Knat in person, but I've known her for years. I've met Lynn in person and got to know her the last couple of years through blogging. I would be so much fun we could get together!

The eggs are beautiful! I had four two-yolkers last week from my jumbo store bought eggs.