Eggs

We have a bunch of chickens.   Most of them are old and don't lay, which is actually a little bit aggravating, but what can you do?   It's not like they've got a lot of meat on them for eating.  Plus K2 turns a little green when we talk about eating her babies and since she hand raised most of them, we let them hang out until they die on their own.  

All of which means we aren't getting many eggs.

But one day last week, K2 brought in this batch of eggs.

They are a white duck egg, a green chicken egg and a tiny beige chicken egg.  
Once in a while a chicken throws a little practice egg like that little one.  Egg white only.  Weird. 

Here they are in a row with another brown egg:

From L to R:  duck, chicken: Americauna, chicken: Buff Orpington, chicken: probably Barred Rock.

The Americauna chicken, whose name is Lark, lays really big eggs.   And she's really noisy while she's doing it.   Can't say as I blame her.  

Ducks lay really big eggs all the time.   We're moving toward more ducks and fewer chickens.  The ducks forage on their own and take less feed.  They're less destructive of the garden.  The saxony ducks that we prefer are more reliable layers than the chickens.   Since we lost all but one of our laying ducks last year, we've got a new batch of saxony ducklings coming in May.   Next year we'll have reliable layers again. 

How did we lose them?    They decide to brood and they hide in the grass, under the old woodpile, and heaven only knows where else.  They disappear.   We thought we'd let them raise a brood their way but the coons and foxes found them.   No fun.  Next time we let them brood inside the coop or not at all.   This means we'll spend a lot of time watching them during brood season to find their nests.