...around here, that's as much literal and metaphorical. The funny things you find on the farm... Hey, it's Saturday, a slow news day and even slower for visitors...
We've got guinea fowl, bantam chickens, fancy chickens, and regular old commercial chickens of the types that are industrially farmed for eggs and dinner. We've got big birds, little birds, and right in the middle birds.
Right now we've got some guinea hens that have just reached sufficient maturity to start laying, along with some other hens who are in their prime. No elderly birds yet. But after decades of store-bought eggs, the variety you find when out on the daily egg hunt (that's what happens when you let 'em wander - which is why industrial operations... don't.) is sometimes bemusing.
Such as this trio here that we picked up one day this week.
On the left is an egg from a new-laying guinea hen. Chances are, if that one is fertile, the keet wouldn't make it. Not a lot to work with, for a bird, which when born, is usually bigger than that egg.
The center egg is about the size of your standard large store-bought egg. And the monster on the right is from one of our Big Bertha's. Chicken faces don't show much emotion... but I'm betting if we'd seen the hen laying this, she would have looked like she was working hard!
The only thing missing from this is one of the pastel blue/green eggs we get from the Americaunas.
We've got guinea fowl, bantam chickens, fancy chickens, and regular old commercial chickens of the types that are industrially farmed for eggs and dinner. We've got big birds, little birds, and right in the middle birds.
Right now we've got some guinea hens that have just reached sufficient maturity to start laying, along with some other hens who are in their prime. No elderly birds yet. But after decades of store-bought eggs, the variety you find when out on the daily egg hunt (that's what happens when you let 'em wander - which is why industrial operations... don't.) is sometimes bemusing.
Such as this trio here that we picked up one day this week.
On the left is an egg from a new-laying guinea hen. Chances are, if that one is fertile, the keet wouldn't make it. Not a lot to work with, for a bird, which when born, is usually bigger than that egg.
The center egg is about the size of your standard large store-bought egg. And the monster on the right is from one of our Big Bertha's. Chicken faces don't show much emotion... but I'm betting if we'd seen the hen laying this, she would have looked like she was working hard!
The only thing missing from this is one of the pastel blue/green eggs we get from the Americaunas.
Oh, I remember the feeling, when we got ourselves regular chickens for our dacha (country house)... We did not have as much space as you do so we did not really have to 'hunt' for eggs even when the chickens were 'free ranging'... and they are still warm if you get to them quickly :o)
I've thus far been spared that experience. But I have picked 'em up warm and damp.
Ah well, - that's why the Farm Ops are hers. I work in an office.