Our hens are outside and without artificial light. Why is this important you may ask? Because hens are day light sensitive and only lay eggs when days are about 10 hr or more of daylight. So they are starting to lay eggs again! I'm getting 6-7 again each day and I am thrilled and I know a few of my die hard egg buyers will be thrilled as well. I can't remember which blog I was reading the other day but I learned that you can freeze eggs in the summer or fall when you have more than you may know what to do with for those time in the winter when I had no eggs. You scramble them up and add 1/2 teaspoon salt per cup of eggs and then freeze them in an ice tray. I'm going to do this next year to last me through winter as I was about 4 dozen eggs short this winter.
We have about 40 new hens that are almost 16 weeks old and in 8 weeks or so will they will be ready for this season to lay eggs for us and our CSA members. We are only selling eggs to CSA members and a few other die hard egg purchasers this year as we are scaling back the eggs from last year. We're going to switch to organic feed and concentrate on this small group of hens. (yes 40 is small compared to 140 or 150 we had last year)
All new hens have been carefully selected in order to optimize the 'beauty' factor of the dozen eggs. I'll have greens, whites, hopefully pinks, deep chocolate and lighter brown with and without speckles. I can't wait!
