The hardboiling dilemma

I learned something kind of surprising over the holidays. Although fresh eggs are tastier, healthier and just generally all around better eggs, they do have one shortcoming. They don't hard boil worth a D***!

A couple of days before Thanksgiving A~ and I began trying some different methods of hard boiling them so we could have some deviled eggs with some semblance of a decent appearance. It wasn't happening. You may know what I'm talking about. That incredible stick to the shell power of fresh hard cooked eggs is more that my usually nimble fingers could work around.

So I consulted one of my go to people for all things chicken, or egg.. or whichever came first.? Anyway, Laura over at (not so) Urban Hennery comforted me with the knowledge that her eggs do the same thing. and her most consistent solution; old eggs. That's right, old eggs. It seems that as the eggs age, the proteins in the egg kind of mellow out and let the shell go. Huh? Maybe that's the reason eggs bought from store shelves average 30 days old already? Anyway, we decided to start saving a bunch of eggs separate from the rest so we had them available when we wanted hard boil some for whatever reason.
As you can see, we came up with a really technical way of coding them as well. 1-1 in our code means the eggs were set apart during the first week of January. It's rudimentary I admit, but it works well. I now have a bag of hard boileds in the fridge at work to eat for breakfast and they slide right out of the shell!

So, if your new to raising your own eggs, save yourself the frustration of sticky shelled eggs and let them chill out for a week or two in the fridge. You'll be much happier with the results. I promise. Have any other ideas for ways to hard cook fresh eggs that works well for you? Leave a comment share it with the rest of us would ya?
Catch you tomorrow.
P~

EGGS - The Natural Way

A~ and I raise chickens in our backyard and, although we have had occasion to kill, process and consume a couple of our "extra" birds (Roosters that came for free with our mail order hens.), we don't raise them for that purpose. What we do raise them for, is eggs. So as we began to move into the colder winter months of the year, we had an issue confronting us and needed to make a decision. Natural or artificial?

What I'm talking about is whether or not we wanted to provide our birds with artificial light in order to ensure that they continue to pump out eggs like clock work similar to, yet on a smaller scale than, the way commercial producers do or whether we wanted to let them have a bit of an off season, time to re-coop. (Pun intended.) After we talked about it and gave it some thought, we both agreed to a sort of trial period. What we're doing is not providing any artificial light, for the time being, but we may yet do it before the end of the winter. We're not trying to just be indecisive. What we are doing, is following much the same philosophy that we do with most everything that we do around here. Take it step by step, see what happens and adjust as necessary to keep the birds healthy, and maintain our egg supply.

Here's our thought process. First off, we don't raise the chickens for pets. Yes we love them and they're fun to watch and all, but primarily they are for food production, green waste disposal and manure generation; food doesn't get purchased for them for no return after all. That said, we also try to maintain a fairly natural order of things around here; organic veggies, compost, and natural pest control for instance. Because of that we thought we owed it to them to at least give them the opportunity to "slow down" for a season, while still maintaining a minimum number of egg production. I believe that there is a reason that the birds will naturally slow down with their egg production in the winter time. It is a part of their physiology, and pushing them beyond that is likely to reduce not only their lifespans but I believe their long term productivity as well.

So far, I have to say, so good. We have 9 chickens total, and although we are no where near their regular 7 or 8 eggs a day that we got during the summer months, we are still averaging about 4 a day. Our drop dead number was exactly that, 4. What I mean is, when we decided to let them have their "down time" we set 4 as our minimum daily number of eggs that we were willing to accept before introducing artificial lighting. We've had a couple of 3 a days, but not enough to worry about in my opinion, so for now, their still on staycation.

One of the things that instigated me to make this post was a post on another blog, one of my favorites, the Tiny Farm Blog. There, the Tiny Farm Blogger, posted that he wondered what would happen with his birds if the day light hours dropped below the recommended 14 hours for even a single day? So I looked into it, just how long are our day currently? Turns out, quite a bit less that that. Today for instance was set to only be a 9h-26m-21s day. That 5 hours less! Even better news was that the shortest day of the year for us is set to hit in just 18 days, Dec 21st. So we're nearly half way through the short daylight part of the season!! We may just make it.

What do you do with your chooks if you raise them? The natural way, or artificial? Ever tried it without light? Let me know, I'm curious. I'll keep you posted on my experiment as well. Oh yeah, and in case your in UT and want to see the daylight hours and such, check here. Not to ignore my non-Utahan readers, you can find your city by searching here.
Till next time.
P~