More Eggs

Since I keep getting hits on my blog from people Googling "pullet eggs", I thought I'd show another photo. The egg on the left is pretty much a normal, large egg like you'd buy in the store -- if I haven't lost my perspective entirely from not buying store-bought eggs for quite some time. The one on the right is a good example of the pullet eggs we got for a while when the hens were getting started.



They do vary in size all along, generally getting bigger. Sometimes the tiny ones we got later had no yolks at all.

Pullet Eggs

We've started getting eggs! Here's a picture of the first one I found:



The hen pushed the hay out of the corner of the coop and lined the spot with a few feathers, then laid the egg there. So then my husband and son got to work building nesting boxes! The hens mostly use those, but usually one egg a day is just laying out on the chicken coop floor. That can't be a very good mother hen, at least not yet.

Pullet eggs start out smaller than a normal egg. I should have taken a picture of the teeniest one we found. I wasn't even able to use it, because the membrane inside was so tough that it wouldn't break without shattering the shell. I decided a teaspoonful of egg probably wasn't enough to fight over.

At first there was one a day. We've worked up to usually four a day now, with ten young hens laying.



They are still mostly small eggs. We've gotten two that were like typical large eggs, but the one I've used had a double yolk; that makes an egg larger.

I've used them only once in baking, because it's hard to figure out exactly how many to use. I did measure a large egg in a liquid measuring cup so that I could approximate the volume when using the pullet eggs for cookies.

We're going to be bringing most of the hens over to my parents' soon, where they were always intended to go. But we're going to keep three hens, which theoretically will give you about 2 eggs a day on average, according to a chicken book I looked at. We've got a light on a timer in the coop now to encourage them to keep laying even though the days are getting shorter.

Those little eggs make cute, miniature fried eggs. Normally I can fit three large eggs in my frying pan, but on this day it held five:



The yolks are so orange from all the fresh greens the chickens are eating (and my red tomatoes, those darn birds). The pancake batter and chocolate chip cookie dough I made lately were deeply golden.

Easter's On Its Way

Today we colored eggs. I like to do it the basic, old-fashioned way: food coloring with vinegar and boiling water. I've never used a Paas kit and I have no inclination to. This year we got slightly adventurous and tried putting rubber bands on a couple of the eggs.



But mostly, it's just a pleasure for kids to set the eggs in the cups of colored water and baste them and turn them until they reach the desired color.




Sometimes it's fun to make them two-toned:





However you do it, and even if it's a little messy, coloring eggs is so fun.



Thanks to Jo for being our photographer today!

Good Eggs

I buy eggs from my parents, who have free-range chickens: beautiful Buff Orpingtons.

The best eggs in the world are farm-fresh from chickens that have eaten a natural, varied diet. Especially when the weather is warm and they're eating green things and insects, the eggs have so much flavor.

Two of my kids had never eaten an entire fried egg in their lives. They thought they were yucky. The first time they tried the free-range eggs with dark yellow yolks, they loved them and cleaned their plates. Fresh eggs also fry and poach much more neatly, so they look nicer, too.