18 Eggs Today

Eighteen eggs today. My timing is a little off. I have 15 young pullets that I got in the mail last April. Actually, I got 25 in the mail and sold ten before they were out of diapers so to speak. Remember when I said brooding chicks in the basement was a dusty mess—well this is of what I speak. Brooding chicks consists of getting a couple of refrigerator boxes from behind Massie’s and setting up a couple of heat lamps, shavings, food and water. I brood them in the basement and when they get fully feathered and big enough so that the black snakes won’t eat them I pen them in the corner of the chicken coop. This is about at 12 to 14 weeks.

Once when I was not paying attention to the still small voice that said—wait! I put chicks in the corner pen. I came in the coop to check on them and there was a black snake with one halfway down its gullet and another one constricted at his tail end. Wow—I went primal. First of all black snakes are not poisonous but even so, snakes are creepy. So I got a shovel, scooped him up and took it outside and beat the holy tar out of him. Did I mention I went primal? Only later did I realize that I didn’t need to kill the snake—it was just having lunch; it was just following its nature. I could have just let him go. I will be more temperate next time.

Anyway, back to why my timing is off. I didn’t want to get the chicks so early like in January or February that it would be cold and hard on them living in the basement—like this year for instance. Chickens lay eggs according to how much light they get and first year layers lay one egg almost every day. As they get older they lay one ever two to three days and the eggs get bigger. In the summer they lay more. I wanted to sell eggs at the Farmer’s Market last year but alas the girls did not really start laying until last week. Imagine that. Now I will have to wait until April when market opens to have a place to sell. So today I got the most eggs ever—18, which makes me a busy bee on the telephone calling around for customers to sell to rather than lollygagging at my table at the Farmer’s Market, drinking a cup of coffee and gabbing with Sheryl.

I’ll get to the Auschwitz girls soon, I promise.