Yo!

Just popping by quick to say Hi, and to mention that I may not be able to post for the next Idontknowhowmany days, because my terminally ill computer has taken a sudden, steep nosedive in which the caps lock, w & q keys have all, rather abruptly, surrendered the burden of this mortal coil and have left me angrily shaking my fist in the general direction of hoever designed this stinking heap of a Helitt-Packard. Once the mystery illness spreads to a vowel, I'm sunk.

Anyhoo - I've been managing to knock out a brief Today's Take post each evening over on Ye Olde Bog Blog, should you be interested in keeping you finger on the pulse of Mudlandia. For instance - on the agenda for this lovely Independence Day? Cleaning chicken coops! The glamour of farm life never ends!

Eggzilla!

According to a handy-dandy little chart on Wikipedia, any chicken egg larger than 2.5 ounces (70+ grams) is considered "Jumbo". Well, they might need to invent a new category for some of our laydies' eggs. Check it out -

Booyah!

Can you read the bitty numbers on my scale? That there egg is a quarter pounder! Curiosity had me googling average duck egg sizes and even they don't typically get this big. Dear hen that laid this - thank you and also, I'm sorry. Maybe we should cut back your protein a tad? :-\

Now that I've brought this egg in, the girls are suddenly keen to have eggs for dinner. They're dying to see how many yolks might be inside this badboy. My guess is at least two. We'll let you know!

Update: Mystery solved! Two full sized yolks!

Another Odd Egg

We've seen a few of these lately. I'm not sure what causes it, but we call these "water balloons".


Looks like a relatively normal egg, right?


Except...


No shell at all, only membrane!

I'm going to have to research this phenomenon further, but I suspect that it is just a fluke that occurs now and then, especially with newer layers. Our girls get plenty of calcium in the form of crushed oyster shell and a very complete diet of organic, locally milled pellets, a loaf of bread per day, and all of the fresh grass, plants and bugs that they can eat, so we're not really worried that it's dietary, but can't rule it out altogether either.

To play it safe, we always compost these, though it might be fascinating to try and incubate one one of these times. Hmmm...