Welcome back, everyone! I know this little blog has been on hiatus for the past 5 months, and to those dedicated readers, our most sincere “Thank you!” for hanging in there. Remember in our last post (all the way back in October!!!) where I shared that we were being pulled in 1,000 directions? Well, that didn’t let up. The shorter days and incessant snow, wind, and below freezing temperatures didn’t help matters any, either. It takes us about an hour and a half to plow ourselves out when it snows and cracking ice out of waterers 1-3 times a day and collecting eggs 4 times daily from 7 coops really eats up all the free time. Now, we should be in the free and clear, since night-time temperatures are getting above freezing and day time temperatures are high enough to solidify us into mud season.
Some exciting news! We’ve had some custom egg cartons made and will start selling eggs in the next week or two! Our ladies are laying up a storm. The groups include the breeder flocks and the ready-to-lay pullets. When Z and I collected eggs a few nights back, we counted, and got 10 dozen out of a little under 200 birds… Quite impressive for girls just getting into the swing of things. Everyone but the 13 birds in Home Flock are about 7.5 months old, which means that egg size has started out at a light medium, and has been steadily increasing to a light large. The eggs are simply beautiful. With the free ranging everyone is doing now as well as us offering free choice oyster shells to everyone, shells are shiny and tough. While there is little around in terms of grass, the girls are picking bugs and bits out of the field and leaf litter in the woods. This, in combination with the alfalfa in their feed, makes for strong yellow-orange yolks. The whites stand tall and hold together well.
This week, you’ll see a couple updates to our product inventory. We have some updated pictures of our ready-to-lay pullets as well as updated availability. Additionally, because we are getting more eggs than we can set every two weeks, we will be offering a few of our breeder birds for sale as ready-to-lay pullets. They, like the grow-outs, are around 7.5 months old and will lay steadily through the year before taking a break this coming winter.
Finally, there will be two changes to the “Chicks” page. I’m going to be removing the estimated hatchling availability table because we have been having some trouble getting our incubators to hold temperature properly and the hatches are not meeting our estimates like we thought they would. Instead, we are going to offer a wait list for each of our hatch dates, and if you are interested, please reach out, let me know which breeds you’re interested in and how many, and I’ll contact you as soon as we have a hatch so that you can select your chicks.
The second change is that in addition to our pure breeds, we are going to offer some Home Flock babies for sale. These chicks will come in an assortment of colors, comb styles, and personalities, and will lay eggs that can be blue, green, light brown, and dark brown. We love our menagerie of Home Flock birds, and are looking forward to sharing them with any who want to add a little spice to their purebred flocks. For those who are not familiar with mixed breed hens, they are a delight. No two are exactly the same, and they get to take advantage of hybrid vigor, which means that they will be stronger and will very well likely be better producers than their parents. If you’re not particular about egg or feather color, these will be for you. We’ll also be raising out a few as started pullets and will do our best to put up photos of the individuals available.
That’s all for tonight! See you next week!