We have eggs again,
That’s right you heard me we have eggs again,
So bright and yellow, fried or scrambled, I don’t care,
I’m just so glad to have those eggs again…
Eggs at last, Eggs at Last! Thank the Gods Almighty, we have Eggs at Last!
The Unfortunate Moult of 2012 left us sans oeufs for several sad months. We eventually started buying eggs. Oh how I hate to stand in front of those many many options, weighing the cost against the quality and the environmental and animal welfare choices they represent. And, of course, they weren’t all that tasty.
But that sad, dark time has passed. We are very lucky that our hens recovered from the harrowing deprivation they experienced in August, once again granting us the bounty that comes from their butts.
(Technical note: The eggs do not come out of their butts, but rather the ‘cloaca’, which is an all-in-one, multi-purpose orifice. Although ‘cloaca’ is vernacular for ‘sewer’ in Spanish, the bird cloaca is sanitary for egg passage. As the eggs descend the reproductive tract, a flap of tissue unfolds over the common area so that the egg can leave the hen’s body without touching anything that her waste touched. Nif-T)
Excerpt from one of my chicken talks demonstrates ‘The Sanitary Egg’
Sustainable Scientist 
Sweet…I’m trying to convince Nathan we need to get chickens. He is reluctant but I think I can get him hooked on the coop building aspect 🙂
-erin
You definitely need them. I recommend building a fully confined coop and run, with optional paddock expansions. You have a huge yard so if he really doesn’t care for them in the end, they don’t much have to bother him or be his responsibility. But he’ll probably find them fun and interesting after all. And so worth it for the yummy eggs!
“…granting us the bounty that comes from their butts.” HA! Whether technically true or not, this is a great line!
I though someone else would appreciate this 😉
I’m still patiently waiting for my 2 Welsummers to start producing after summer broodiness followed by a hard moult. My Columbian Wyandotte, thankfully, has not skipped a beat with her 6 egg/week schedule since she started laying in March of last year (when the others started, as well). Crossing my fingers that March brings me more beautifully huge, terra cotta speckled spheres of goodness.
Karen, do you have a light on in your coop? This is our second winter adding light and it has made all the difference. We put up Christmas lights that go on at dusk and stay on for 4h. Just a little extra ‘daylight’ may be all that your hens need to get their eggs going again!
I don’t have a light in the coop, but they free range during every daylight hour, so I’m hoping they’ll start again soon. I may try that next year. For now, we’re getting fairly close to having 12 hours of daylight per day, so I’m hopeful it will happen before long. How my Columbian Wyandotte has kept it up through the entire winter, I have no idea, especially in the dismal grey of the Pacific Northwest!