Posted by Farm at August 29th, 2009

We’re back into the routine of milking and bottle feeding Remith, the sole survivor of Mithral, but our new pullets have started laying. Guess they haven’t quite figured it out yet because earlier in the week Travis found this huge egg. It wouldn’t fit in the containers, so we put it off to the side and I used it tonight to make dinner.

Well, pullet eggs are usually small, and though we’ve had a double yolker or two, I was not prepared for this. A Triple yolker!  These little chicks would never have made it, but you can see the size of the egg, and the three yolks that were inside.
Later on I cracked open an egg with “siamese twins,” and found another double yolker in this last week’s production run.

These chickens are not quite what we asked for, but it’s going to be interesting. I had ordered Buff Orpingtons, which we have three remaining from last year’s flock (wolf and coyote attacks, argh!) . When the chicks came they were a little darker than we expected, but there are always variations. However as they aged the rooster looked more like a Rhode Island red and so did some of the pullets. Some of the girls are really pretty with gold tipped body feathers with red shanks. But definitely not the large gold birds I’ve come to appreciate.

I found out yesterday that there was “an escape” at the hatchery and the Rhode Island Red rooster had flown into the Orpington run, so  these are “half breed,” birds.  The rooster looks like a New Hampshire red, and the hens are a variety of shades of red and gold, but it looks like they got some “hybrid vigor,” in the egg laying gene. They are only 5 months old and laying reliably 3-5 eggs a day, not bad considering I only have 6 pullets. My 2 year old Buffs are still laying occasionally, so every day is an “Easter egg hunt.”

God, I love living on our farm!