Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?

{I had this post ready to go live back in July well before I decided to stop posting on SparingChange.  So, now that I’ve come back from my 2 ½ month hiatus, this is what we chose to do with a broody hen. }

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about our broody hen, Latte.  She refused to come out of her nesting box and we were torn as to what to do.  Our options:

 

1. Buy fertilized eggs for her to lay on
2. Lock her out of the coop until she is done being broody
3. Buy pullets (female chicks) so that our egg production does not go down while we have a broody hen in the future

I found a micro-farm about an hour away from where I work and the lady I spoke with was a wealth of information.  I emailed her a week later about our decision to get pullets; however, she didn’t have any that were sexed to ensure we were getting female hens instead of roosters.  We were able to purchase chicks but there was no guarantee how many males or females there would be. 

After staying up late one evening weighing the pros and cons of each option, I decided that the fertilized eggs were the best route for us!  In my mind, it was the most natural (and frugal) way for Latte to put an end to her broodiness.  She is getting what she wants: to lie on eggs for 21 days and patiently await the baby chicks!  This decision cracks me up a bit because we originally wanted nothing to do with the fertilized eggs due to the fact that we would have roosters.  However, after thinking about it, I decided that if the roosters were a problem, we could have them butchered and eat fresh chicken throughout the year. 

 

 

 

 

I made the drive after work to pick up the dozen fertile eggs on Monday, June 25^th.  Again, the owner of the micro-farm was nothing less than a pleasure to deal with and extremely accomodating. She gave us some extra fertilized eggs with our order.  When I got to her house to pick up the eggs, she gave us a shipment that a woman ordered but never paid for!  So, instead of getting a dozen fertilized eggs for $20, we got 30 eggs for $20!!!  It was like Christmas day for me on the 25^th of June!

 

 

On the drive home, I began to fret about how we would house these chicks that would be hatching in 21 days.  We have a double-decker chicken coop where the nesting boxes are on the 2^nd floor.  I was worried that when the chicks hatch that they might fall and hurt themselves.  My wonderful husband agreed to make a nesting box on the first floor of the coop for our nesting hen and the fertilized eggs.  The cost to us: Free.  We had all supplies on hand.

 

 

A pro to having the fertilized eggs is that we can keep a rooster (assuming we get at least one rooster out of the fertilized eggs) for ourselves to fertilize more eggs in the future; thus providing more adorable chicks!  In turn, we can pretty much “grow our own food.”  When I think back to what Todd and I are striving for in our lives, this simple step of purchasing fertilized eggs go hand-in-hand with our ultimate goal.  We want to grow our own food, and now, we have the ability to do just that!

So, the learning begins all over again with the new addition of our eggs.

 

 

And if you want to see what Latte did as soon as we put a portion of the eggs in her nesting box, you can witness for yourself the natural beauty of a hen protecting “her” eggs in this video. (Please excuse my husband's belch.  He didnt realize I was taping.)

 

 

We are expecting the chicks to hatch between July 14^th and the 18^th, and I cannot wait!

So as it turns out, I still cannot answer the question about what came first: the chicken or the egg. But I’m OK with that.

I would like to make mention of my husband through all of this.  This is the man who never wanted anything to do with chickens in the past.  Now, he is the man who said it was OK for me to bring home fertilized eggs and he was even willing to build me a nesting box on a whim to house 15 eggs and a broody hen.  Now, he is building several more nesting boxes to install into the coop to accommodate the chicks that end up hatching: whether that be 6 or 30!  Really, what man would put up with these crazy antics of mine?  I am truly blessed!

MIA

I am not sure if anyone has noticed but I have been (intentionally) MIA for the past 2 ½ months.  At the beginning of July, I scheduled an post that I decided never to make live, but to just let the blog sit idle.  I didn’t know for how long the site would sit unattended, but it wasn’t until I received encouragement from a reader several weeks back and a friend ofmine who also reads the blog that I decided to start writing again.

Don’t get me wrong, I have missed updating and writing on the blog over the past 2 ½ months, but I really needed the time away to focus on other things in my life.

This is the post that never made it live back in July:

I Don’t Want To Be Connected (To Electronics, That Is)

Over the past month, I have been struggling with being “connected” by the internet and cell phone.  For the first time in my life, I am not concerned about the amount of time I am spending online because I am met with my own personal resistance to being connected.  I am perturbed by a society that is connected to their cell phones and internet connections every waking minute.

In the month of June, I inadvertently started to break away from blogging* and the internet in general.  I think I posted once a week for two or three weeks.  I checked my email every several days but I was horrible at responding back.  It was so bad that I even received a second and third email from a friend who was worried that something happened to me!

With the fast-paced world around us, I have been yearning for the truly simple life.  A life with no real plans on the weekends and time spent together with friends and family face-to-face.

Have you gone through a phase that you completely disconnect from the internet and your cell phone?

 

*Please note that I love-love-love connecting with people! I enjoy blogging and reading emails and comments from followers of the blog.  But I have been cutting back a bit to “stop and smell the roses” along the way.

 

So, what have I been up to over the past 2 ½ months?  A lot!  I have several posts to write and update my faithful followers on what we have been up to here on the homestead including what we decided to do with our broody hen, how our garden turned out this year, our new way of eating gluten/dairy and sugar-free, and many other topics.

The only difference from the past is that I will not be posting nearly as much as I used to: most likely just once a week.

To all the readers who have stuck with me through all of this, THANK YOU.

Our First Year of Collecting Eggs

From Left to Right: Blondie, Latte, Mocha

July 1^st marked our first (full) year of our chickens laying eggs.  It has been a learning experience but so much fun to raise these chickens! 

Stats:

• From July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011, our 3 chickens laid 476 eggs*
• From January 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012, our 3 chickens laid 402 eggs*
• Total Eggs Laid: 878 (73.16 dozen)
• We got our first “fart egg” in 2012 (a fart egg is a teeny-tiny egg-so cute!)
• Total spent on chickens and feed from birth to current date:  $ 140.41
• Price per dozen: $ 1.92

You may notice that the chickens have not laid as many eggs in 2012 as they did the last half of 2011.  I believe that this is due to going on a 10 day vacation and a broody hen.  There were two days in 2012 that we did not receive a single egg.

Mocha: "What YOU lookin' at?"

Even though we could buy non-organic white eggs at the grocery store for less, we enjoy having the chickens running around the back yard, eating bugs, demolishing kitchen scraps, staring at us as if we are the odd ones, and providing a source of fresh eggs every day.



Source

*This statistic does not include the eggs that were cracked or broken.  It also does not include the eggs that our neighbor collected for us while we were on vacation.  They kept the eggs as a perk for keeping an eye on our little cluckers.

A Humble Reminder: Recipe for a Happy Marriage

Last year, Todd and I found a framed picture with this Recipe for a Happy Marriage.  At the time, we were having a rough day/week/month.  As I saw the "recipe", I chuckled and Todd came over to read it.  He said, "We have to get this."  And we did...for $1. 

Now we are in a much better place in our marriage.  This picture it is the first thing we see as we walk into our bedroom.  It is a constant reminder of what we need to do to continue to make our marriage the best it can be.

A Broody Hen

Latte : our broody hen

Over the past week or so, we have had a broody hen.  I’ve heard of the term before, but I never realized that hens without a rooster (thus, no fertilized eggs) would go broody.  To be honest, I thought our chickens were “broody” when they did a little song and dance after laying an egg! I was sorely mistaken.

We had noticed that the number of eggs we’ve been getting from our 3 chickens has decreased since the weather got nice, which was very confusing to us.  Come to find out, Latte, our “leader of the pack,” is actually broody. 

How to determine if your chicken is broody:

• She will not come out of the nesting box
• When you physically pull her out of the nesting box to go run about with the others, she is fluffed up and not happy at all!
• The once leader of the pack will become a loner
• She will stop laying eggs

I decided to visit Craigslist to see if we could find some fertilized eggs.  We have been talking about getting 6 more pullets (female chicks) next spring, but wanted to know if we could get the fertilized eggs now and let Latte incubate them naturally.  I found a micro-farm about an hour away from where we live that has fertilized eggs ready to be warmed up by Latte!  The owner I spoke to was a wealth of information.  I learned that if we went this route, it would take 21 days for the eggs to hatch. How fun!!!  The only downfall is that we could potentially get roosters, which we are not interested in.

So how do you stop a chicken from being broody?

You keep her out of the nesting box.  We have a door that closes and locks the nesting box so that nothing could get the chickens at night.  We are now using that to lock Latte out of her nesting box.  By doing this, she is not able to nest, thus, in the next week or so, she will be done with being broody and start a regular routine of laying eggs again. 

The other routes are to buy pullets from this breeder and let them mature this summer and fall to start laying eggs for us in late fall or winter and wait patiently for Latte to get back to her usual routine of laying eggs. 

We have yet to decide what we want to do, but I will tell you that I am pretty confident we will get our pullets from the micro-farm even though they are double the price of pullets from Tractor Supply.  The owners brought their chickens over from Australia (not shipped by a hatchery!) and they breed with only their original blood lines.  I like that the chickens didn’t come from a hatchery, are hormone, antibiotic-free, happy free-range chickens! 

SIDE NOTE: Upon doing research on how to sex chicks, I found this on YouTube that breaks my heart.  This is how our first 6 chicks were handled before getting to Tractor Supply, and then to us.  No wonder one died within 24 hours!  I am now fully convinced that we will not be getting any more chicks from a hatchery of any sort.

Have you ever had a broody hen?

What was your experience?

Mulit-Tasking

Multi-tasking is overrated in my opinion.  I used to boast that I could multi-task with the best of ‘em, but now I am proud to say that I am consciously trying not to multi-task throughout the day. 

There is something to be said about working on and completing one task at a time instead of being torn between five different objectives.  I have found that when I multi-task, not one of my tasks gets the attention it needs to be completed in the way I would prefer, thus creating more work for me in the end. 

For me personally, when I follow-through with one project at a time, it takes less time to complete.  I am entirely focused on the project at-hand and nothing else. 

I am forced to multi-task at work every day.  I am the sole Purchasing Agent for a multi-million dollar company.  I am torn between incoming phone calls, a dozen sales reps requiring quotes and asking questions, resolving a shipping error, finding obsolete product, placing orders and rectifying incorrect invoices.  I can be working on all of these things in a 15 minute time frame.  This is most likely why some days, I am so mentally exhausted that I can do nothing but read a book or veg out in front of the television.

What are your thoughts on multi-tasking?