Last Wednesday, I found our first "egg" in the henhouse. It didn't really look like an egg. It didn't have a shell, but was a soft, rubbery, vaguely ovoid mass that had something that looked like a bit of scrumpled up paper attached to it. Yuck!I thought that maybe the girls weren't taking the grit (oyster shell) that I'd put out in a separate container for them, and this might be why they weren't laying - and would explain the shell-less oddity. On Friday, I decided to grind up the oyster shell into smaller bits. What I'd been sold initially wasn't crushed oystershell - it wasn't a fine powder, but fairly small pieces of shell. I wondered if maybe the chickens didn't recognise it in that form. It was quite difficult to grind it up with the mortar and pestle, so I didn't quite get the fine powder I was after, but at least it was small enough to mix with the feed.
Saturday was the first day they had the grit mixed in with the feed
Saturday 4th September was when we got our first proper egg!
I went to check on the hens at around half past eleven, and noticed that Jenny wasn't out and about with the rest of the girls. I found her in the house, on the nest box, so I opened up the side to see if she was okay, and there she was, trying to incubate her egg. She got up and walked off when I opened the side of the house, so I picked up the egg. It was smooth and still warm.
It seemed quite small compared to the eggs we'd been buying, so I thought I'd get a photo of Jenny's first free-range egg and a bought one to compare the two. The egg with the speckledy shell is the bought one. As you'll see, it's really not that much smaller than a bought "medium" egg.
Since then, we've had one egg a day from our ladies, though one of them produced another shell-less oddity yesterday, so maybe that's a sign that one of the others coming back into lay. I do hope so.
I ate one of our own eggs the day before yesterday. I cooked a bought one, and one of our own to compare them. Ours had a deeper yellow yolk and a richer flavour than the bought one. Wow!
Here's to lots more eggies from our three ladies.
I'm so glad we've done this. Rescuing ex-battery hens was absolutely the right thing for us.
