Eggs by Ostara

It’s just about time to replace the chickens.  The broilers we raised up earlier in the summer have all gone to stew or curry or stock, except those few that are still at freezer camp¹.  The layers are all at the end of their laying days.  It’s about 6 months from day-old chick to the first egg laid, so we need to get started now to stay on track.  Over the years we’ve tried a lot of different breeds and most of them have been good egg producers, though it’s hard to tell exactly who’s doing what when you have 15-20 birds sharing nest boxes!

I have always ordered day-old chicks from the hatchery.  The first year, I ordered 2 Dominiques, a heritage breed with a great disposition; 2 Rhode Island Reds, which lots of folks swear by, but mine were nasty and loud; 2 “Easter-Eggers”, a hybrid version of the Ameracauna, known for its colorful eggs, and 2 Australorps, big black beauties with the sweetest shimmer of green in their coloring.  Oh, and 2 Gold-Laced Wyandottes, skittish and lovely.  I think that’s it.  We raised them by hand, in the house, where they made a tremendous mess and became quite tame.

That was, oh, five years ago?  Six, maybe?

Next I bought a half-dozen Black Copper Marans from a local breeder.  2 turned out to be roosters, crazy-beautiful boys, but our zoning expressly forbids roos in the neighborhood so back to the breeder they went.  The Marans lay an egg with a very dark brown shell which, according to Ian Fleming, is 007’s preferred breakfast.  I have no idea why, but there ya go. If James Bond ever came to my house and stayed over (because, ya know, James Bond, fer-petes-sake) he could have his fancy scramble (if ya know what I’m saying).

Last time we bought some laying birds, we got the “brown-egg-layer assortment” from the hatchery, where they just send you 15 of whatever they have extra of for a reduced price.  Since we’re not a commercial operation and we don’t require a certain output, we can afford to take a chance.  These girls were Barred Rocks, White Leghorns, Buff Wyandottes and several others that I couldn’t identify!  They were raised by our hens, so they’ve never quite become used to humans.

Over the years we’ve lost a few birds to raccoons.  Some fell to illness or injury.  We had a Wyandotte and an Easter-Egger just collapse off their perch during the night a few months apart.  Weird things happen!  Some of the oldest birds we took to a workshop on slaughtering so we could learn how to do that.

Most recently, we lost 4 hens to a particularly dedicated bobcat.  That’s a whole ‘nother story.  But suffice it to say that since that happened, the spirit of the flock seems to be broken.  One of the girls had her eye injured in the last attack, so she was in solitary for several weeks and since her reintroduction, they’ve all been fighting.  Half of them are going into a molt and since the season is changing, egg production will only go down from here.  At their age (3-6 years), they’d be slowing down anyway, so there’s no guarantee that we’d be back up to average in the Spring.

I’m resistant to buying chicken feed *and* eggs through the Winter!

I think we’ll give them a few more weeks, maybe til Equinox, then harvest the whole flock².  We’ll order some chicks to start up now so we’ll have eggs by Ostara.  Perfect.

¹ More on meat birds in a future post…

² More on slaughtering in *another* future post!