I haven’t written about my Hennie Pennies for awhile, they deserve a few words. They didn’t lay over Winter, that’s alright. They were slow in getting to the laying part of it this Spring though, but did do it. The Leghorn hens are old, for hens. We got them in February 2003, they hatched in October 2002. As Pullets their first laying began in March 2003. That information combined with this years timing means they are in their 3rd laying season, and doing well. Not every day for each one, but some seem to be every 2 days, and some are every day almost. We have 7 Leghorns and often get 4 white eggs a day. They are our only white egg layers.

Our green layer is Hawklady. She’s doing alright, laying often: every other day, many times every day for a few or up to a week, sometimes off for 2 or 3 days, but overall, a good layer. Sporatic pattern, but laying.

The 2 Wynadottes, brown layers, are laying, as are the other brown layers, the 4 Australorps. That’s 6 hens in the brown egg category, and we get 2 or 4 eggs sometimes each day, often more so 4, and sometimes 5 or 6.

I have been horrid about counting the eggs on a sheet of paper, or on the computer. I have these neat little plans in my head, and they don’t translate onto visual very often, to my shame. I really want to have accurate figures, and fall off the wagon too often.

I have had too many eggs to do anything with at times this year, but not for very long. I have a rash of eggs to give to the animals now, old ones that are too old for people to eat. Dog and cat will eat the ones they want to, not bad ones usually. It’s not that they are “bad” only eggs with bacteria in them are “that bad” and they are eggs usually that are cracked or filthy for days on end, but almost universally will have a crack somewhere, hairline or bigger, whether or not it’s found by a knowing human. So my contention here is only that “bad eggs” come about because of hairline fractures in the shell, and that fracturing allows the introduction of bacteria.

I am not saying there is no other way for an egg to go bad, just that this is the main thing about it most of the time, in my mind. I never saw a bad egg before last year, and it was a very dirty egg, about 2 weeks old, I opened it up and said “yup!”. Further understanding came when I did see that hairline crack afterwards.

Since having hens that lay I’ve been careful to inspect the eggs and use whatever is cracked or hairline cracked right away, but that doesn’t mean a super-hairline crack could go unfound, of which I did have one of those the second egg year. None others that year though.

This year I’ve had a couple of bad eggs, my practices are worse though. It’s just that I don’t “always” clean the eggs right away, and then I often clean them before I use them. Eggs built up this year and I didn’t use them as fast as I wanted to, so I had a couple of “going bad” things when I did get to some “sort of older” eggs. I don’t have a box for my Leghorns to lay in and it can get messy when they aren’t moved on the grass to a new location ‘religiously’, therefore in the case of things as they are, the eggs aren’t “lilly white” when I get them. I need to get a box out to them, that alleviates dirty broken eggs of any sort, if I make sure the straw or hay is clean each morning. Rain makes my nesting boxes fall apart. They are simply the water boxes we get 6-one-gallon jugs in, with a few cuts and held up with bungee cords. It works wonderfully. Tropical rainstorms defeat that system though, the bottom drops out. I could paint the box first, then it’d hold up. But that is neither here nor there as to why I haven’t done so. Just the fact is, I COULD put a new box out there once a week. We have enough boxes available at any time for such. It’s the basic “I designed it” but “don’t do the every-day-of-it” so well. My actual design calls for an easier lid for that hen pen, and the box that I use to be painted before installation. As it is, the top is too heavy and I could go on and on … just a different top would make the pen easy to move again and it’d be no problem to do that or to get egg out from the grass. The current top is just a big aggrevation, a piece of thick plywood. It doesn’t blow away with tropical gusts though. So I will just say, I need to put a new box out there and just live with it. Replace it when it needs it. I failed myself

The brown and green eggs are from the A-frame and that situation is much different. Their egg nest shelf isn’t for eggs anymore. They just sleep up there. They lay in the corners in the grass for some reason suddenly this Spring, instead of the lofty nest area. So I recently pushed a boxed in the area under the loft, and it stays, gets wet from the ground, doesn’t fall apart since it just is sitting on the ground in the first place, and it dries out eventually, the 90% of the eggs are layed in the box now, and the others are just in the corners in the grass, and they are mostly clean, just spot cleanings and they are mostly uncracked, leaving the language open to allow for a crack or two in the past or future.

I haven’t “refridgerated” eggs before since they can be used in a few weeks and stored at room temperature just fine. Our house is without A/C this year and last though, so it’s an issue with ickier eggs to keep them for a few weeks. Ickier eggs need to be used right away really, especially without cooler air. 80 degrees F. is not “room temperature” Because we now have “two” refridgerators I am now starting to put eggs in the old fridge, but I have a lot of eggs left from the end of May as well as June that I need to just give to the cats and dog now. Eggs that are cleaned, if they are white, are not pretty, so I’ve not tried to sell any, or had opportunity to give them away fresh. I would be comfy giving stained eggs to some people, but not most. In any case, my hennies are really not laying THAT much more than I can use. For now I have to just use what I get and get a better nest box situation going for the Leghorns. With that, I’ll post this and go get a box ready.