I sell farm eggs and not just any ole egg they are free range eggs. What is the difference in farm fresh eggs and free range eggs? Well it is in the wording..my chickens roam around my farm every day, those are free range eggs. If I kept them in the coop those would be farm fresh eggs.
How many times have you seen the different shows (DIY, HGTV, etc.) take ordinary surroundings and make them into something with a little more pizazz? I believe the message is meant to let us all know that it is the presentation of your surroundings is important to people. It can be anything from moving furniture around, painting a room to help brighten and update, enhancing a picture with scrapbooking supplies; you name it there are thousands of ways to enhance a presentation of a product or environment.
When I worked in the corporate world, a well put together report was just as important as the information that was supplied. I have always said it is in the presentation of the product that matters. So in keeping with my thinking I am doing the same for my customers who buy my free range eggs.
I now have 25 laying hens and am soon to have a couple of more next month. Since it is only my husband and myself at home you can imagine the over-abundance of eggs. A couple of months ago I started supplying a local group of women with farm fresh eggs. Believe it or not, a lot of these women had never had eggs fresh from the farm. I had to educate them on farm-fresh eggs versus store bought eggs.
I educate the ladies in two different ways, verbally and visually. I recently came across some information from Mother Earth News where they had tested free-range eggs compared to store bought eggs. What do you think they found?
According to Mother Earth News test results…free-range eggs have a higher vitamin content and…
- 1/3 less cholesterol
- 1/4 less saturated fat
- 2/3 more vitamin A
- 2 times more Omega-3 fatty acids
- 3 times more Vitamin E
- 7 times more beta carotene
Can you believe these results?!? Who wouldn’t want to eat free-range eggs over store-bought anyday!
When I package my eggs for my customers I use recycled cartons from people who bought store-bought eggs and add the information above with the recipe for easy peel hard boiled eggs. My customers love it! They are thrilled to learn about the benefits of free-range eggs and an added bonus of a tested way to cook hard-boiled eggs.
Now the reason why I got this poultry brooder is a different story. Remember my little baby chick brooder…
As you can see by the picture a snake got into my chicken cage. I utilize this cage for a majority of things but when it is warm enough a chick brooder it is.
I bought these 29 baby chicks last Thursday at the farm animal auction. I have no idea what breed but at .75 cents each I couldn’t pass them up. The next morning I went out to feed early and everything was fine. I went back two hours later and there was the snake.
Immediately I started snatching baby chicks out of the brooder and putting them into a box. The dang snake had already eaten two of the chicks so it was too fat to get back out of the cage. He killed four all total.
I moved the sweet little chicks into a box and in the house they went.
It didn’t take long before my husband got tired of having the baby chicks in the house so the plans for a brooder were in the works. Yeah for me since I have on order 26 more baby chickens from Cackle Hatchery that are shipping on June 17th.
Instead of starting from scratch he built the new brooder around the chicken tractor that he built last year. I don’t know all the technical names for the screens he used but the mesh is a much smaller size than normal chicken wire. Here is the finished product…
brooder
I think it looks fantastic and has so much room! It has openings on both sides with screening in the center.
On the left-hand side I placed a brooder light above the area.
chicken brooder
I put a little straw in there just so they would have something to walk on besides metal. With the temperatures as high as they have been there is no need for the brooder light during the daytime. In the evening I turn it back on and can see the baby chicks in the house chasing after bugs in the brooder.
chicken brooder right side
The right side of the brooder is wide open which gives them plenty of room for growth. I plan on keeping them in there for a while since I already have all of my coops filled to capacity. I guess that means we are going to have to start building another pole barn chicken coop 
.
The mesh metal/wire on top that separates the lighting from the chicks we bought at Lowes and it is something called “Diamond plate mesh” or close to that name. It is actually very sharp on the edges and my thinking is if a snake does happen to get through somehow on top the diamond plate will tear his skin up. I hope so anyway.
Another addition I purchased recently has been my find I found on Craigslist…
Dark Brahma pullets
They are three months old. Their previous home had an over-crowded cage so they are missing a few feathers on the rear end but with them having full run of this coop they will be in full plumage in no time.
I’m considering starting a mail-order business for Brahma chicks and hatching eggs. I love the Lt. Brahma and have 15 chicks on order from Cackle Hatchery and now with the Dark Brahma all I lack is the Buff Brahma. And a rooster for my Dark Brahma pullets. I also ordered 16 Golden Wyandottes so that could be a potential for selling hatching eggs also. And my Buff Orpingtons that I hatched earlier this year and they are looking spectacular.
Who knows where my raising chickens escapades end up. Hopefully never ending, always expanding.
Tags: baby chickens, brooders, Chickens, snake
In it you will find:
- Homes for the Fowl: Pictorial of a pole barn modification to a chicken coop with 4 pens
- Did you Know: Food products to help keep your chickens healthy
- Fowl Recipe: Chicken and Egg Casserole
- For the Birds: An article that gives ideas on creative ways to feed your wild birds
- Questions from the readers: Does a hen need to eat while brooding?
And a couple of pictures from my bird feeder.
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Tags: Chickens
Due to the abundance of eggs I have I try to incorporate eggs into our diet via deviled eggs, egg salad, fried eggs, or any other way I can find to utilize them. Making a hard boiled egg has always been a challenge for me. Mine always turn out hard to peel, which in turn gives me cooked eggs whites with hunks out of them; not a pretty site when I am trying to make deviled eggs for a special dinner.
Today I ran across a recipe on how to get the perfect boiled egg. I tried it and it worked! So here it is for you just in case you have some of the same problems I had (past tense):
How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs
- Heat your water to boiling.
- Add a dash of salt
- Add eggs with a ladle
- Boil for 14 minutes
- Rinse eggs with cold water and peel
They turned out perfect! They were so easy to peel and the egg yolks were a perfect color.
Tags: hard boiled eggs, recipes
Light Brahma baby chickens
Black australorp baby chickens
The Australorp chicks were over 2 months old and the Lt. Brahma’s would have been two months old this week.
I have to admit the Lt. Brahma chicks were my favorite. They have such a sweet personality. Very friendly, easy going, just made you smile at the antics they got up to when I was around. The Australorps were more skiddish even though I had them both in the same pen and handled them just as much. I definitely could tell the difference in the personality of the two breeds.
The day that it happened I called the lady I bought the Lt. Brahma chicks from trying to buy more but she had none to sell. I searched Craigslist and posted an ad expressing my wants with no luck. So a couple of days later when I was still missing my Lt. Brahmas, I found a hatchery that would let me order in smaller quantities and did just that…I ordered 15 Light Brahmas and 11 Golden Wyandottes.
I own a Silver Laced Wyandotte and she does a great job of laying eggs and everyone who sees her always oohs and aahs over how pretty she is. She is not very friendly but then the breed is known to be off-standish.
So in the meantime I am preparing to varmint-proof my coop. It has been so rainy here that we haven’t been able to work on anything. But they say that after today we are supposed to get a few days without rain. I hope so because we are living in a swamp right now. And the new fashionable footwear is rubber boots!
Our plan for protection proofing from the varmints is to dig a trench around the coop and place mesh wire into trench around the bottom edge of the coop so they cannot dig under again. We have already have wire overlapped at the top of our coops so the varmint would not be able to climb in from above. We were lax in working on the bottom and now I have lost my little babies.
In the meantime my Buff Orpingtons are in the next pen over and the only thing separating it is chicken wire so we have been tying our dog up at night at the coop. She doesn’t like it but neither does the varmint because it hasn’t been back. I’m going to do my best to make sure any of my other chickens meet the same fate anytime soon.
In the meantime, one of my hens went broody and she hatched out five little chicks last Monday. Today I have 11 eggs in the incubator that are due to hatch anytime so I will be busy the next few weeks taking care of more baby chickens until the new ones arrive. And getting ready to varmint-proof my chicken coop.
Tags: baby chickens, Chickens, predators, varmints
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