Oh It Is Good To Be Home

How much did I miss home? Well let me just say that I have never been so happy to smell the, um, fragrance from the local dairy. After 19 days away (that's the longest I've ever been away from the farm) all that cow poo was the sweetest smell. I don't know if I would have felt the same if it had been 90 degrees out!

Of all the animals I missed Hoover the most. Here's how he greeted me. He is always mellow! I just about burst into tears when I saw him.



I missed the chickens almost as much as I missed Hoover. Everyday I asked "How many eggs did you get today?" Collecting the eggs is my favorite part of the day.

I was so excited to find that I got home just in time to find the first eggs that my Wellsummers laid. There's nothing like finding these small eggs that have such amazing rich color! I think it is so incredible that the chicks that I hatched in the Spring are now all grown up and laying.

The pictures don't do the color justice! The smaller eggs are a rich deep brown color. There's a touch of red to it. A bit of terra cotta. Like rich hot chocolate with a hint of terra cotta. I could look at these eggs for hours. These aren't the first Wellsummers I've had but it doesn't get old. (I know, but, sorry, I'm weird like that.)


Now this picture is a bit better but it still doesn't capture the true color.


Oh, I am so happy to be home. Even the thought of having to muck out the barn is a happy thought!

Ordering Eggs for Incubating

I have ordered chicken eggs online for incubating many times. I've never had a problem. I've never had one egg arrive broken. So I wasn't prepared for this.


I knew it wasn't going to be good from the looks of the outside of the box. And there was the letter from the post master saying my eggs had soiled 13 other packages. There was egg yolk everywhere so I was surprised to find that only 5 eggs were broken. Normally I never clean or wash eggs in anyway before I incubate them but clearly this was a special circumstance.

These are Welsummer and Americauna eggs. Will any of these eggs hatch? I'll know by May 9th.

Less than a week after I started the chicken eggs in the incubator I received a call from a friend who had just gotten some pheasant eggs and wanted to know if I could incubate them. So I fired up my second incubator since only one incubator has an automatic egg turner I decided to put half of the pheasant eggs in the incubator with the egg turner and move some of the chicken eggs into the other incubator. My thinking is that the eggs in the automatic egg turner have the best chance for hatching.

I'm very excited about the pheasant eggs. I have never hatched pheasants before and I would love to have some pheasants around the farm.

Here's a picture of the eggs in the incubator. The brown eggs are the Welsummers, the large blue (white looking) are the Americauna, and the small green eggs are the pheasants.

Double Yolked Eggs

We have a hen that is consistently laying double yolked eggs. I'm not sure which hen it is. No one really stands out. From the size of the eggs someone should be walking funny.


Here's a picture of several eggs. On the bottom row there's a chicken egg, double yolked egg, turkey egg, double yolked egg, chicken egg.

Turkey eggs are pretty big. But the double yolked eggs are even bigger than the turkey eggs. I feel sorry for the poor hen who is pushing these puppies out.

Home Home Home Home Home Home

I'm home!

It was fun. It is always great to spend time with my parents (not necessarily in the car for hours.) But,I miss all the animals so much when I'm away. Every night I would ask my husband. "How many eggs did you get?" "Any weird eggs?" "How's Hoover, Kirby, the goats, the chickens, Cleo,.....?" It must drive him crazy.

Well, there were some weird eggs that he saved for me. I have gotten over the disappointment of not being the one to find them.

Hoover greeted me fresh from rolling in something disgusting.

Kirby flopped down for a belly brushing.

The cats were all over me.

I brushed the goats and collected today's eggs.

It is so good to be home!!

Tiny Egg

Getting the eggs is the highlight of my day (most days). That's not to say that my days aren't exciting, just that there is something about collecting the eggs that I love. I always want there to be a lot of eggs and I'm hoping there will be some really dark brown eggs. So I never know what I'm going to find.

Yesterday I found a tiny white egg. I was catching a rooster to put him in with the goats (to give the hens a break) and he kicked up this tiny egg. Now, I know HE didn't lay it. Almost all of my hens lay brown or green/blue eggs. So I'm trying to figure out who laid this tiny white egg.

Here's a picture, from right to left: really big egg (one of our hens is laying twin yolked eggs), a normal sized brown egg, a normal sized green egg, the tiny white egg. There is a second green egg on top.



So who could have laid this little egg?

It could have been one of the guinea hens.




They are all just getting old enough to lay an egg. It would be a really small egg for them. But sometimes a "first" egg is small.

Then there is Beethoven.



Beethoven is a white crested black Polish chicken. I've never really been sure if Beethoven is a hen or a rooster. He/she has never crowed. So I'm guessing she's a hen. She a bantam, and if she is a hen she would lay white eggs. It could be her egg. We named her Beethoven because when she was getting her head feathers she we debated between "Einstein" or "Beethoven" and decided that Beethoven was a name that could go either hen or roo and still invoked the crazy "hair."

Just another picture of the egg with a penny to give some sense of scale.