Farmer Friday

Eggs from the compost chickens

The compost chickens are doing well and give me a few eggs a day; lots of these are going into the incubator because they are all older girls and still laying.

cardboard and manure mulch

I planted out some rosemary, oregano and a Lady Banks rose by the chicken pens. They were mulched with cardboard and newspaper covered with manure.

helpers!

I've had some helpers lately and certainly appreciate them!

The Silkie babies got a new house

The plum trees are blooming

It has been way too warm here, with trees and flowers blooming as much as a month early.

eggs for the incubator

Time to hatch chicks! Lots of eggs going into the incubator, duck, Ameraucana, Buff Orpington, Black Copper Marans, olive eggers.

Superior Farmer's Market

Tomorrow I'll be back at the Superior Farmer's Market with baby mustard greens, kale, collards, Superior grown grapefruit and lots of fresh eggs!

A peak at the light set up at my house:

And soon I'll have lettuce for market!

The Girls Moved In!

Today's Eggs

I'm sure you are probably tired of looking at egg pics, but I love collecting all the different colors, sizes and shapes! So much fun!

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In the second photo I picked out some special eggs, the five in the top semi circle, from left to right are, Black Copper Marans, Welsummer, Buff Orpington, Ameraucauna, Easter egger. The lower three eggs are all from the new Easter Egger pullets.

The girls have moved in

I did finally move some girls into the first part of the new chicken house. Here you can see a piece of plastic rain gutter screwed to the wall for a feed trough and a coffee container has been recycled into an oyster shell dispenser.

Here you can see some of the girls I kept for my flock. The big black girl in the middle is one of my Black Copper Marans; she's not the one that laid the egg in the pictures above. I put her in with the pullets so I can see what color her eggs are but she hasn't laid one yet. (Unless she laid that light speckled brown one next to the olive one at the bottom. If that is the case I am going to be really disappointed as she is one of the bigger hens I have.)

Egg Shell Color Genetics

Easter Egger pullets

I thought it was about time to give you an update on those cute little chicks up at the top of the page. Those are some of the 30 or so chicks that hatched on my birthday in April so going on 5 months old. They are part Ameraucauna, so actually just mutts, but some will lay blue or green eggs. Ameraucauna chickens lay blue eggs and have a small pea comb. Apparently the pea comb and the blue egg gene are closely linked, so in general if they have a pea comb they are going to lay blue or green and if they have a single comb then they will lay white or brown depending on the mix of breeds they are.

single comb on left, pea comb on right

So how do we get green eggs? Well there are actually only two colors of egg shell, blue and not blue. What I am talking about is the color of the shell itself, all the way through. If you open up a blue egg and look under the inside membrane, you can see that the inside is blue also. But when you look inside a brown egg the inside is white (genetically, "not blue"). You see in a blue egg the blue pigment is an integral part of the egg shell. However, in a brown egg the brown pigment is actually a coating put on the outside.

A green egg happens when a bird has the blue egg genes along with some of the brown egg genes. She makes a blue egg shell and then coats it with the brown coating. The shade of green it turns out to be depends on the brown genes and the amount of brown tint she adds.

As you can see there are a variety of colors and patterns on these girls. Some have single combs (and so will probably just lay brown eggs) while others have pea combs (and so will lay blue or green).  Some have great muffs and beards and some have clean faces. Purebred Ameraucaunas are required to have muffs and beards by their breed standard and I do think they are cute. But beards and muffs have nothing to do with the blue egg gene, so as long as they have a pea comb they will probably lay blue/green eggs, even if they have a clean face.

And some of them have begun to lay already!

I can't wait to see what other colors I get out of these girls!