Pastured Eggs!
Eggs seem to be all the rage nowadays, as the government mandated that many flocks be culled last year, and the incessant Federal Reserve printing has created higher prices for just about….everything! But I digress…
It’s been pretty cold here for a few days, so I was really excited to find this little treasure trove in our egg boxes. We experimented a bit with selecting blue-egg roosters to hang with the flock last spring and hatched a bunch of those eggs in an incubator. We weren’t really sure what to expect in terms of egg color, so it’s exciting to see a variety of colors and patterns.
The smaller eggs are from the hens that hatched last summer, so they are first-time layers, and their eggs will get larger as the hens mature. You can see a bit of the size difference between an older hen and a younger one.
What does it mean when we say “pastured” eggs?
Our laying flock is rotated around our farm in a mobile coop. Hubby built the coop out of scrap sheet metal, and it’s got some neat features, like “windows” that can be propped open in hot months, a mesh floor that allows chicken poop to fall through to the earth, and nesting boxes that keep the eggs pretty clean.
We rotate the birds around the farm so that they have access to various types of nutrition like grass, bugs, other plants, compost, etc. How often they are moved depends on many things, like how big the flock is, how well the grass is growing, whether they’re on top of our compost pile, the square footage they have to peck, and so on. Moving often means that they’re not living on scratched-up dirt, and they constantly have access to new bits of nutrition. It’s also a great way for us to naturally fertilize our fields, as chickensh*t is full of nitrogen and other elements critical for growing plants. It takes a little extra work moving them around our pasture every week, but it’s symbiotic relationship, and we’re happy to do the work. Our layers have great access to a diet in line with their nature, and we get the benefit of healthy, nutritious eggs - one of nature’s perfect foods.