Friday, October 9, 2009

Which Came First – The Chicken or the Egg?

The answer to this age-old question remains largely unanswered, but in our case, the answer is the chicken.

I knew they were coming. It was inevitable. Mr. threatened to order chicks from our local farm supply store for many years in a row, but never actually did it. Despite my protest…to put it nicely, I am not a fan of birds. This was the year for chickens.



I even tried to redirect and made the suggestion that we should get rabbits instead of chickens. He must have misunderstood me…ha, ha – he heard rabbits in addition to chickens. So after he finished the “Hilton” of rabbit hutches and filled it, Mr. set out to build a chicken coop this spring and spent many hours researching the best egg laying breeds.

He finally settled on New Hampshires, Red Stars and Black Stars; they arrived at the end of April. They are supposed to be cold weather hearty and produce a good number of eggs when they reach approximately 20 weeks old.

Unfortunately, these first eggs aren’t what you’re used to seeing from the supermarket…they are tiny to start out. What we didn’t know is that they aren’t tiny for very long. In fact, not only do the hens start producing eggs that are much larger very quickly, they also start laying double yolk eggs, which are downright huge.


Mr. was correct in the breeds that he chose…they have become egg laying machines. These eggs are just from yesterday. 9 eggs out of 11 hens – not bad at all.

Who wants breakfast?

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