Ella-eggs – a seasonal delicacy?

Ella’s eggs are the largest of our hens’, with an average size of 71 g (check out this page to see where that puts them on the standard commercial grades). They’re also the most indulgent to eat, as the yolk seems to make up a greater proportion of the egg than the other girls’ eggs, and the whites are thick and cling to the yolk. All this means they make a lovely fried or poached egg, and are our first choice when we’re having eggs that way.

But, as you’ll be aware if you’re a regular viewer of our monthly laying summaries, Ella isn’t the most productive of our girls. In fact in her first season laying (i.e her pullet year – supposedly their most productive time) she laid a total of 100 eggs. (Considering that her breed still holds the world record for most number of eggs laid by a single hen in a calendar year without artificial light – over 360 eggs – this is very definitely sub par.) Last season she did slightly bit better (108 eggs), and this season hasn’t been too bad (27) so far – although it still leaves her well behind the others, except Claire (who has an excuse). As a comparison, Frida (not from a high-laying breed) laid 205 in her first season.

Given that her peak production is in spring and early summer, we’ve come to the conclusion that Ella’s eggs are effectively a seasonal delicacy, like asparagus, whitebait, or Bluff oysters. So we tend to value them that way too, and they rarely get sold or bartered away! (Right now we’ve got seven stashed in the fridge, all laid in the last 10 days or so …)

Broody-Ella

And they’ll have to last for a while – she’s just gone broody. And she’s a determined and grumpy broody hen, so who knows how long before we get another egg!

Happy 1st Birthday Neroli!

Almost let this pass – one year ago today, Poppy hatched out the peebles! So happy 1st birthday Neroli, and to Princess/Pinkie, Sylvie/Cleo, and Rachel/Blue.

It had to happen (again)

She spread her wings and fluffed them wide
and filled the nest from side to side.
“The urge has come upon me!” cried
Our noodle-brained Poppy.
“Get me some eggs to sit on,
and then bugger off!” said she.

(JP, with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson )

Yes, it had to happen. In considerably less time than it took me to compose the above, Poppy has gone from normal to broody fluff-monster.

Oh well. We got 92 eggs from her before going broody this time. Which is 60 more than she’s managed before. And Venus has returned to laying … (conspiracy, anyone?!)

Shrinking lumps and breaking broodies

(With gratuitous chooks-roaming-the-garden photos.)

A good day in ChookeNZ-land! (Although you might want to skip the next paragraph if you’re of a queasy disposition.)

We took Poppy to Veronica today for another check. We’re winning! She’s on her third type of antibiotics (twice daily this time), with us cleaning the caseous pus out of her mouth every evening (which involves a towel, a pair of tweezers, cotton buds and lots of swearing – human and galline) and smearing the wound site with manuka honey ointment night and morning. And yesterday we got a huge lump – about half the size of my little-finger nail – out of the top ‘chamber’ of the wound. I swear the lump went down by a good two thirds, just from that. (We were going to take it in to show to the vet, but Poppy ate it. Eeeew!) Anyway, she’s definitely improving. The pus is pretty much all surface now, so it’s just a matter of keeping everything clean and making sure the infection is well and truly cleared up before she stops her antibiotics. Woohoo!

We’ve also managed to break Venus out of her broody spell. She’s spent the days in the broody coop with the door to the nesting area shut, so she’s bored, secure, and unable to nest. It only took three days of doing that for her to snap out of it. Brilliant! (And ironic.) Because she was within sight of the girls during the day, and back with them as soon as laying was finished (when we’d shut the pophole to everyone) there was no issue of them forgetting who she was. Now we just have to wait for her to start laying again.

Reintroducing Frida to the flock is taking a bit longer than we’d hoped. We’ve moved Bessie in with her, which is going well. And Claire and Lily are fine with her too. (She’s gone above poor Lily in the pecking order, but it’s not been a traumatic adjustment.) Neoli and Poppy, however, want nothing to do with her. They all bristle and hackle and pace up and down the mesh threatening violence.  Ella’s done the odd hackle-and-bristle too, but it’s much less frequent. (Or convincing.) We’ve tried having Bessie and Frida on the lawn and giving either Poppy or Neroli some very closely supervised interaction with her, but they’re still leaping into agro-mode as soon as they realise who it is. (And yes, Frida is the instigator as often as not.) After Poppy’s infection, I’m not in any hurry to get them to sort it out. They’ll get tired of it eventually.

Living garden art

As part of Frida’s rehabilitation, we’ve been giving her access to the lawn, hedge and herb bed. It proved so popular (and surprisingly un-destructive) that we’ve started making a point of giving everyone some supervised lawn time.

It really is a gorgeous sight. Grazing the lawn is popular. But the girls seem especially keen on the sorrel and the self-sown winter purslane in my raised herb beds, so they’re both getting quite a thrashing.

And then there is the utter bliss that is scritching through the piles of decaying hay along the hedge …

A few words of wisdom for those of you who are keen to try it with your own chooks:

• Make sure the yard is secure before you let anyone out. (Obvious, I know.)
• Ideally, try to let them out late in the afternoon, when they are calm and full – your garden will survive better if this is a treat rather than the best chance for a meal.
• Have a container with some sort of treat – meat, mealworms fruit, grain, whatever – somewhere handy but out of sight so that you can easily get the girls to come to you in an emergency.
• Cover anything vulnerable or poisonous. The girls will learn pretty quickly what is out of bounds (a scolding voice and a calm but firm push away from the item in question seems to do the trick for us) but you don’t want to be worrying about too many things at once.
• Try not to let too many out at once. We find four to five pretty manageable, but it will depend on the birds in question.
• Consider flock dynamics: if you have the top of the pecking order out with one of the bottom, it’s more likely to cause trouble than if you keep to similar status birds. (You don’t want anyone being chased. Keep it calm.)
• Sit down nearby, and enjoy!