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Eggs everywhere!!! The birds are in high production with the increased natural daylight. Spring! Easter is coming and boy do we have eggs. There are eggs, and more eggs. Our new flock of Animal Welfare Approved laying hens has started producing their first eggs....finally. Seemed like forever until that first egg. They are now up to 5 eggs a day. Soon it will be 300+ per day.
Our older hens have started laying, the quail are laying, the geese are laying their huge white eggs (shown above compared to a chicken egg), and the blue slate turkeys are beginning. The emus on the other hand have stopped laying for the season. Wheew! Quiche, custard, angel food cake or souflee, Anyone???
We have sent our Emus to the original flock where we bought them from in Cedar Falls. The person that we bought them from originally, had super bad luck with serious flooding in his field last year and lost 100 of 120 birds due to drowning. Perhaps we will get more chicks next year, but this year we are concentrating on smaller birds. The emus are awesome, but as we age they become a little hard to handle. They are spooky, flighty and run up to 35 miles an hour. Hubby and I cannot run at all right now. He is still recovering from a serious ankle break and I from knee surgery. The emus can be intimidating when they get spooked. We still have some emu products for sale, but cannot say what the future will bring.
Our new incubator is working overtime. Immediately upon it's arrival I set a large batch of quail eggs. I candled them yesterday and see that they are coming along according to schedule. They are growing quickly in their quiet darkness inside the shells. They only take 18 days to hatch. Can't wait for them to pip their shells on the 30th. These will be our replacement layers. They are so tiny when they hatch--just a little bit bigger than a quarter. Adorable fuzzy little things.
We also have another batch of chicks to be picked up next Thursday. These are chicks that we will grow in our pastures for meat. They are not cornish rocks, but a French breed of chicken that does better on pasture, loves to forage and has great flavor and crispy skin with less fat. They are also beautiful birds. It will truly be a pleasure working with them and watching them move around the grass.
Some wild stray dogs killed our ducks last week. What a disaster! Somehow they got into a 6 foot high fenced paddock. The fencing is in good repair. They killed every last one of them. I feel so bad about it. The worst part of the dogs killing the ducks is that they just do it for sport. They didn't eat them, just killed them all. I will order more ducks and electric poultry netting and am still looking for a livestock guard dog. No duck eggs this year. :(
Gotta let the birds out. The rain has subsided for the day at least.
Eat more pastured Animal Welfare Approved eggs!
Tai
