the sub-zero temperatures over the past week have provided a good test about whether or not it was worth the effort to insulate the nesting box in an attempt to prevent frozen eggs.
The Conventional Wisdom folks said the insulation wouldn’t make a difference and unless we were able to collect the eggs throughout the day ( not a possibility ), we’d probably end up with a 25% of the eggs frozen by the time we got to them.
we haven’t had a single frozen egg so far this winter.
while it’s true that chickens are not particularly picky about what they eat, we have discovered that they do certainly have preferences and The Girls are quite fond of salad greens and yogurt ( all organic of course ).
the salad greens are great because the’re nutritious and they help maintain the deep orange color of their yolks.
there is some debate about feeding yogurt to chickens since they are lactose intolerant, but others say yogurt with live cultures is just fine since the probiotics break down the lactose and the benefits of probiotic cultures on the chickens gastrointestinal tract outweighs the risk of lactose intolerance ( diarrhea ).
i’ve never noticed any runny poop or other effects after giving them yogurt, but i really have no idea if the probiotics in the yogurt is actually helping them. all i know is they lurve the yogurt!
and when i say they loooooooooove it, i mean They Love It. as in, even after i bring them their regular chicken feed, they keep looking at me likem, “hey, seriously, are you bringing us the good stuff?” and when i do bring it out they don’t even wait for me to put it down before they start diving it ( there is a full fresh tray of chicken feed behind them in this photo ).
although i don’t know for sure if the probiotics are helping them, i do know The Girl who was feeling under the weather recovered relatively quickly and didn’t die ( which is what many people who have chickens privately told me was probably going to happen ).
i have no idea if this is related to our Girl who is feeling under the weather, but it is a curious coincidence that the day she got sick one of The Girls laid an egg that looks unlike any other egg we’ve seen from them.
i’m not even sure how you’d describe it. mostly mottled? the shell doesn’t seem otherwise affected. this site seems to indicate mottling means the egg didn’t dry out quickly after laying but i can’t tell from the photograph if that’s actually what happened to the egg we found.
perhaps it’s indicative of some sort of viral infection or nutritional deficiency that’s related to the illness? or just a red herring?
update: informed sources tell me that the mottling is just a coincidence and not related to the illness.
update again: hmmm. more clues? the under the weather hen just laid a egg with a shell so weak it broke with the slightest touch.
well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. it appears that one of The Girls, a barred rock isn’t feeling well. when she took food out the coop at sunset, kris noticed she was standing with her beak in the corner of the coop, uninterested in feast which is quite unusual.
upon closer inspection we noticed her eyes were nearly closed and she was shaking and shivering. she’s not sneezing and her breathing sounds normal – not raspy – and she doesn’t have any mucous around her eyes or diarrhea so i don’t think she has a virus. or at least she’s not showing the typical signs of a virus.
even though it’s wasn’t as cold today as it has been in past weeks we thought perhaps she just got cold, so we brought her in the house to get warmed up.
of course, odin is Very Concerned about her health and sat with her petting her and telling her to rest and Get Better Soon.
she looked rather pathetic when she first came inside but eventually she opened her eyes and looked less, well, floppy than she does in this photo.
i can’t find much information on shivering hens that lack any other symptoms. most of the advice seems to be to along the lines of what we’re already doing – bring them inside, warm them up and try to get them to drink and eat. we made her some hot porridge with cracked corn which The Girls usually devour but even hours later she’s disinterested in it and actively refusing water even if we try to give it to her with an eye dropper.
i’m not sure what else to do. any advice is mightily appreciated.
update: 24 hours later and she’s still alive ( several people have told me privately that by the time they get to the shivering, shaking, no eating stage, more often than not they’ll be dead soon )!
she started slowly taking food and water this morning and she’s much more alert and less lethargic. she was so interested in not staying in her box and wandering around the house that we had to send her to the front porch. which was fortuitous move since she’s now expelling liquid diarrhea that’s really, really nasty smelling and not really brown – more like a clear-to-yellow viscous liquid.
all other signs except for the diarrhea are positive. maybe she’s just working through a stomach flu?
now that we have plenty of Gifts from The Girls, the obvious question is how to best store the eggs?
farm fresh eggs come with a protein coating called the bloom which seals the egg and protects it from going bad from bacterial contamination. supermarket eggs are washed which removes the bloom and forces refrigeration. but just how long can unwashed eggs remain edible without refrigeration?
we’ve heard anectodes from folks with backyard hens who claim 3-4 months! i’m not sure who would ever have the tasty gifts sitting around that long, but a 1977 study from mother earth news, “How To Store Fresh Eggs” seems to corroborate the anectode. according to the article unrefrigerated, unwashed farm eggs were still edible after 12 weeks, although they note that, “If we’d had our druthers, understand, we’d have eaten something else … but, under survival conditions, we could have lived on the completely unprotected 90-day-old eggs if we’d have had to.”
according to the study, an unwashed clean egg placed under refrigeration shortly after being laid can stay fresh for up to six months or more!
so, as strange as it might sound to folks used to fretting about how long eggs have been out of the fridge, keeping clean fresh, unwashed eggs unrefrigerated for a few months seems entirely plausible.
we don’t keep them around that long, but we do tend to have them out of the fridge for a few days before sending our surplus to happy homes and consuming the rest within 7-10 days of being laid.
the inevitable egg with a bit of manure is a little more problematic. washing it will remove the protection of the bloom, so any soiled eggs are handled with care and common sense. don’t put heavily manured eggs in fridge with other food and, as this article states, “Do not immerse your eggs in a sink full of water. The bloom is removed leaving the eggs surrounded by water that contains manure. I think you can see the problem here.”
we’re getting into the groove of getting gifts from The Girls, making eggnog pots de creme, learning how to make the perfect hard boiled fresh egg and generally enjoying the benefits of a few hours of light on egg production.
other than the occasional “double yolker” we didn’t imagine The Girls could throw us any surprises, that is, until we discovered this shell-less egg in the coop. a quick internet search confirmed that it’s not unusual for young hens ( pullets ) to lay shell-less eggs ( mark frauenfelder at the venerable site boing boing shot video of shell-less egg one his chickens laid ), so we’re fairly confident that The Very Unusual Egg is not the result of a systemic nutrient deficiency. if we keep finding them in the coop then we’ll investigate further.
we found the egg amongst the manure that collects in the coop under the roost and not in a nesting box ( another clue that it was produced by a Girl just getting used to laying since a regular layer will find her way to the box and not plop it out while perched on a roost ), so it was certainly not fit for consumption.
but inquiring minds wanted to know if the shell-less egg was like a regular egg in terms of yolk and white qualities, so we put under the knife for further investigation.
there’s no mistaking the egg for a thin-shelled egg. there’s absolutely no calcification at all. the entire coating consisted solely of the membrane that normally resides between the shell and the egg yolk and whites. it’s hard to say for sure, but the membrane seemed to a bit thicker than you might otherwise expect, but it was easily punctured with a knife.
a nice normal-looking, firm, orange yolk was hiding inside. the whites, though, seemed much more viscous and attached to the yolk and membrane which had the effect of keeping everything all bundled together. i doubt it would have made for an award winning presentation on a plate over easy.
so there you have it, our first and possibly ( hopefully ) last shell-less egg. i’ve taken an informal poll of folks who have backyard chickens and none have seen one completely lacking a shell, although most have heard of or seen thin-shelled eggs from pullets or hens that aren’t gettign enough calcium in their diet.
if anyone finds a reference for how common often shell-less eggs are laid ( 1 in 100? 1 in 1.000? 1 in 1,000,000? ), i’d love to see it.
one of peculiarities of having fresh eggs from backyard hens is that the shells are really, really hard and the membrane between the shell and whites is firmly attached to both after cooking which can lead much frustration when trying to make a when you hard boiled egg or egg salad sandwich since you spend your time picking away pieces of shell only to remove large chunks of the egg whites that are stuck to the membrane. no fun!
this is actually one of the better looking examples of a hard boiled egg using our normal method of cooking – put the egg in water, heat to a boil, cook for seven minutes after boiling begins and rinse in cold water. there must be a better way.
we polled various friends who have backyard birds and got a range of responses. the most common was to set eggs aside for a week or two ( plausible suggestion but seemed a pain to have to segregate eggs ). anothers suggested dunking the eggs in ice water after boiling ( we tried that, it didn’t work ) and others suggested adding a bit of vinegar to the boiling water to soften the shell ( didn’t like the idea of having to remember to add vingar and wondered if it would affect the taste ).
one person said the answer was stupendously simple. drop the eggs in the water after it had started to boil. it was so simple we had to try it.
first, drop the eggs carefully into boiling water.
boil for 6 minutes or so.
don’t rinse in cold water – let cool in ambient air for 10 minutes ( presumably the membrane is still cooking/breaking down ).
well look at that! a nice, clean peel! if you look closely, the membrane has cleanly separated from the shell and the egg white. amazingly simple!
after 6-ish minutes in boiling water the egg yolk is best described as “soft-boiled”. while this is perfectly cooked to my taste, if you like hard yolks, you might want to cook for a minute longer.
mince with a fork, add a little organic mayonnaise and celery salt and you’ve got yourself The World’s Best Egg Salad Sandwich.
yum!