Eight Acres

Chickens naturally stop laying eggs in winter.  Actually when you think about the whole fact that they lay an egg a day for so much of the year is completely unnatural.  Birds in the wild will only lay a few eggs until they have a clutch to hatch, but we have bred chickens to just keep laying every day, no wonder they need a break! Read the rest over at my chicken tractor ebook blog. By the way, my chicken eBook is now available if you want to know more about backyard chickens and using chicken tractors.  More information over at the  chicken tractor ebook blog .  Or you can get it directly from my shop on  Etsy  (.pdf format), or  Amazon Kindle  or just send me an email eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. What's the eBook about? Chickens in a confined coop can end up living in an unpleasant dust-bowl, but allowing chickens to free-range can result in chickens getting into gardens and expose them to predators. ...

Recently its come to my attention that not everyone has eggs for breakfast every day.  Pete and I have one or two eggs most days, if the hens have provided enough.  We have a few tricks for preparing eggs quickly, so there's always time before work for eggs (if you're still worried about cholesterol, its ok, they got it wrong, you can eat eggs, read this and come back for my quick egg ideas).  Now, if its just time that's holding you back, here's three quick and easy methods that we use to prepare our breakfast eggs. Method 1: poaching pan This is Pete's favourite, I don't really like cooking the eggs in the plastic cups, but it is quick and easy.  We wipe some butter over the egg cups and then crack the eggs in.  Pete likes his yolks hard, so he just sets this up first thing and then gets ready, and 10-15 minutes later his eggs are ready to eat (don't leave them too long, if the water all boils off, the plastic starts to melt, we've been through a f...

You could just as easily ask "why do we sell eggs?" or  "what came first, the chicken or the egg?". so many chickens.... First we had some chickens, and they laid eggs and we ate eggs every day, but then winter came and we had chickens, but not always eggs.  So we realised that if we wanted to eat eggs every day in winter we would need more chickens, and we bought and hatched more chickens.  And now we have too many eggs in spring and summer.  So we sell the eggs. We currently have 21 hens and 5 roosters (soon to be two roosters as soon as there's some space in the freezer for the other three).  The hens lay 12-14 eggs/day.  We eat 1-2 eggs each per day.  I bring the excess eggs to work to sell.  I sell them for $5/carton.  I used to sell the eggs for much less, but fortunately for us, people in Brisbane are happy to pay a fair price for the eggs.  At this rate we can cover our feed costs through spring and summer, so on balance...

After the winter egg draught, its weird to have so many eggs again!  We have 16 hens, and get about -9 eggs/day, which isn't too bad considering half of them are 2 years old and 3 of them are currently clucky.  We also get the occasional egg from the guinea fowl and I can't decide if we should hatch some of them.... they have been a little bit crazy! I thought you might be interested in the different eggs.  In the photo below, all the eggs on the right are chicken eggs.  The little one at the top is a " fairy egg ", we've never had one before, and I'm not sure who laid it.  We get quite a size range, but not usually quite that small!  The egg on the top left is the guinea fowl egg, they have a pointy top and a very hard shell, they are slightly smaller than the typical chicken egg.  The one of the bottom left is a duck egg from a friend, for comparison. eggs from various poultry When cracked open, the duck egg is the top one, as its from so...

In the past we have had varying success with incubating chicken eggs. This time last year I really wanted to improve our hatch rate and I did some research, which I summarised here . What I found out was that there are lots of things that can affect the hatch rate. Here's how we changed the way we did things and increased our hatch from 5 out of 48 to 34 out of 48, based on the points I raised in the last post. I should also say, that it would be more in keeping with permaculture principle " obtain a yield " for us to let a broody hen do the work of hatching and raising chicks, but incubating gives us more control over the process, even if it is more work. Temperature control is the most important aspect of incubation, it must be 38degC to half a degree. Humidity should be 55-65% for the first 18 days, then 80% for the last 3 days (stop turning at day 18 as well, so the chick can get ready to hatch). The eggs should be turned 2-3 times per day, more oft...

I know I'm not the first to say that we only appreciate what we have when its gone, but it certainly applies to us with produce.  When we first got Bella our house cow we had so much milk we didn't know what to do with it all, the dogs even had some with their breakfast and we got to experiment with cheese-making .  We had Bella artificially inseminated  (remember Kaptain Nightcrawler?) in early December and she hasn't come back on heat, so we expect that she will have a calf in mid September (279 days gestation for a Jersey cow).  Its best to dry her up (stop her from producing milk) about 3 months before she calves, so that is mid June.  We were a bit worried about how Molly would feel about being weaned, but I should have worried more about how WE felt about being weaned!  After having fresh raw Jersey cow milk for a year, to suddenly go without is pretty distressing!   In order to dry Bella, we have to separate Molly and continue milking...

Occasionally one of our hens goes broody, even though we use breeds that are not supposed to, and for that reason, I don't trust them to follow through.  Also, they distract the other hens from laying as they can be very protective and annoying (sometimes to the point of pecking me when I try to collect the eggs), so its best to get them out of their broodiness as soon as possible.  The best way to do this is to separate the broody hen from the rest of the flock, in another cage with food and water, for a few days.  Eventually she will forget her broodiness and will be back to normal when reintroduced to her mates.  We were told to put the hen in a small cage and hang it up in the shade, as the cool air blowing over her is supposed to reduce the urge to hatch eggs. We did do that for a while, when we had a suitable place to hang the cage, but these days we just put the hen in one of our spare chicken tractors for a few days and that seems to work just as good.  ...

Without having a religion or kids to give Christmas a higher meaning, for me, its all about the food!  Christmas is not complete without good food, with my two favourites being ham and trifle (not mixed together!).  We bought a delicious ham from our local butcher (although not nitrate-free, or organic, will try harder next year!). This year I volunteered to bring a trifle for Christmas lunch with my parents in law.  But when I thought about my traditional family recipe, I knew I was going to have to be creative, because its not real food! Traditional recipe for trifle (not real food): Take one supermarket sponge cake (full of additives, yuck, and even better if you can find one "reduced to clear", as it will already be nice and stale) and break into pieces. Drizzle with sherry Make custard from custard powder (not real food) and milk, pour over sponge Drain a can of peach slices (from goodness knows where) and place slices over the custard Whip cream and spread...

Recently we had a serious case of egg eating with all our hens.  We caught them in the act a few times, and they also left tell-tale signs of egg yolk around the nesting box.  For a few days we had no eggs from nine hens in two separate cages, so it was time to sort it out. Considering how long humans have been keeping chickens, the collective knowledge about egg eating is surprisingly inconclusive.  Most of the information that I've read on the net or in books has suggested either culling the chickens or filling an egg with mustard to put them off.  The second option was looking better than the first, but still not ideal, then I came across this forum thread , which had some very insightful suggestions.   The theory proposed on this thread is that hens only eat their eggs if the egg shells are weak.  Apparently the hens peck the egg after its laid to check the shell.  If the shell is too weak for the egg to be viable (ie to hatch a chick) then...

When I have to stay away from home for work, the one thing that miss the most (apart from my husband, the dogs and the other animals) is fresh eggs from our chickens.  We eat eggs for breakfast every morning whenever possible (sometimes we have to eat porridge or weetbix in winter when the chickens aren't laying regularly) and I do notice the difference if I don't have them, as I get hungry earlier in the morning.  I usually order eggs from the hotel for breakfast each morning, but they are not the same as my home eggs.  They have a darker orange yoke and a funny taste.  I assumed that was because they were almost certainly cage eggs, however on a recent holiday we bought eggs from the supermarket and they were just as bad.  I did my best to buy organic free range eggs, thinking that they were the closest to our home eggs as possible, but they still didn't taste or look right. That's when I realised that organic isn't everything!  Our chickens don't ea...