I got home from work today and Kelley told me that she and Moira spent a good bit of time with the hens today. She also said that they collected 9 eggs from them today. That's the most yet. We originally purchased 4 hens back in February. We lost one of them to a fox, we think. When we bought our second bunch of chicks, we purchased 3 Golden Comets, 2 Rhode Island Reds, and 2 Auracanas. Evidently the Golden Comets came of age a little early, so we've been getting 4 to 6 eggs a day since about late July. A jump to 9 eggs means that almost everyone is beginning to lay now...all except our Auracanas. That means 7 birds are laying 9 eggs a day. From what I understand, sunlight stimulates the birds to lay eggs...so increased sun during the summer can have a hen laying more than one egg every 24 hours. The Auracanas lay green eggs, and we haven't seen one of those yet. :)
So as Moira and Kelley were putting up the birds for the afternoon, one of the hens got spooked by something and fluttered up right to where Kelley and Moira had placed the egg basket. It got all the other hens in a tizzie and, as a result, the egg basket was rolling around the hen yard with the eggs getting trampled by birds and knocking into each other. Out of the 9 eggs, 6 were cracked!
I guess it's a testament to the higher quality of organic, free-range eggs, but even the ones that cracked did break the membrane on the inside of the egg, so none were really spoiled. Of course we wouldn't sell a cracked egg regardless, but it sure did help us decide what was for dinner tonight! :)
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