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Aiiiii…they’re getting ahead of me

Anybody want an omelet? I had my first ever four-egg day this weekend. I’m never going to keep up at this rate.

Last year, the two little girls were too little and one of the big girls went broody and stopped laying after dropping a dozen on me.

I didn’t know she was broody. Inexperienced chicken keeper that I am, I feared Mapp was eggbound. This is no joke and can be fatal, so I spent a few days soaking her in buckets of warm, soapy water and — oh, dear, this is no joke either — greasing up her vent with olive oil. I’m not proud.

Prolly why she thinks I’m a rooster. I go anywhere near her, she adopts the ready-to-mate poultry “come hither” posture.

I wish that was a joke.

You know, if you aren’t a sentimental slopbag like moi, chickens are awesome livestock. They lay delicious eggs nearly every day, they will happily subsist on table scraps and bugs and bits of shit they peck out of the lawn, they will make more chickens given half a chance and the — ahem — surplus chickens are delicious roasted or fried.

Comments


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: March 19, 2012, 11:07 pm

I see the joy, that is deviled eggs, in your future.


Comment from JeffS
Time: March 19, 2012, 11:28 pm

I go anywhere near her, she adopts the ready-to-mate poultry “come hither” posture.

Are you saying that Mapp is egging you on?

🙂


Comment from Mike James
Time: March 19, 2012, 11:49 pm

“Prolly why she thinks I’m a rooster. I go anywhere near her, she adopts the ready-to-mate poultry “come hither” posture.”

Now I’ve got an image in my mind of a ridiculously small strap-on. Thanks.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 19, 2012, 11:57 pm

She love you long time no lie GI….

LOL, the problem now is that I’ll NEVER get the South Park Chicken Lover episode out of my mind….


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 20, 2012, 12:11 am

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s02e03-chickenlover


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 20, 2012, 12:21 am

She’ll stop doing it so markedly as the season wears on. I definitely want to catch it on video before she does.


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: March 20, 2012, 1:26 am

Hmm, might be time to take the Telly out and let them watch CHICKEN RUN……


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: March 20, 2012, 1:48 am

Looks like the girls are just gearing up production for Easter Eggs!

Be on the sharp look out for a well dressed rabbit!

Note – don’t follow him down any fabbit holes though, that’s the other one, his druggy brother.


Comment from beasn
Time: March 20, 2012, 2:08 am

Egg art.

http://tinyurl.com/6nr6n9k

Or it might be easier to sell ’em by the dozen at market or the end of your driveway.


Comment from PatAZ
Time: March 20, 2012, 2:27 am

Time to start doing some baking.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: March 20, 2012, 3:29 am

Weaz, did anyone ever pose this problem to you? (I know you hate math, but…);

“If a chicken and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs can one chicken lay in one day?”

I’m told the answer (available upon request) is actually accurate. That’s what I’m curious about.


Comment from JC
Time: March 20, 2012, 4:09 am

Some Veg beat me to it. BTW, Jacques Barzun is still going strong at 104. That’s his age, not a radio station. God bless him.


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: March 20, 2012, 4:43 am

“surplus chickens”

It’s like surplus bacon: ain’t no such.


Comment from Mrs. Hill
Time: March 20, 2012, 5:39 am

I’m shamelessly coveting your egg skelter. Want.

Manna Pro is supposed to be marketing them here soon – in only three colors, though, and none of them black (???) – but so far it’s just been a big teaser campaign. Hrrrumph.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 20, 2012, 12:03 pm

That’s a special tiny one for bantam eggs. It isn’t madly effective — eggs don’t roll gracefully down the chute and have to be moved one by one instead — but it’s awesome for keeping track of the age.

This is important because if they’re too fresh and you boil them, you can’t peel them properly.


Comment from Deborah
Time: March 20, 2012, 2:41 pm

I was admiring the egg holder too. It’s called a egg skelter? I want one 🙂 As for using up the eggs? I’d love an omlette, please, with lots of hot buttered toast. Then I’d freeze some of the yolks, give some yolks to the cats, and make Divinity with the egg whites!


Comment from iamfelix
Time: March 20, 2012, 4:57 pm

Another reader coveting your skelter … and your tablecloth … your chickens … etc. ….

🙂


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: March 20, 2012, 5:25 pm

I’ve got a nice pickled egg recipe, and you can have my wife’s 1000-year egg recipe if you like.

BTW: Thank you soooo much.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 20, 2012, 5:26 pm

Heh. It’s an old enamel-topped table. Bought it at Starvation Army for $15 in 1979 and shipped it across the Atlantic.

It was my desk/art table for years ‘n’ years…but now it sits outside. Uncle B has been known to cover it with plants in various stages of attention seeking.


Comment from orabidoo
Time: March 20, 2012, 6:10 pm

I remember when my age was in single digits my duties included forcible removal of brooding hens from their hay lined nests and soaking them in buckets… of icy water.

Then the hen would be placed overnight under an overturned bucket weighed down with a sizable granite boulder conveniently plucked from a pile of such objects that the family assembled earlier. Next morning… no more brooding attitudes and the laying ability gloriously restored.

I cannot recall of the procedure of tenderly lubricating vents of livestock under guise of … whatever.
But hey, in the Britisher skansen populated by proto-hominids and pre-Norman partisans I suppose anything goes.

Your Stoatship, have you looked at the YGBSM patch of Wild Weasel?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Wild_Weasels_patch.jpg/465px-Wild_Weasels_patch.jpg

It must have been quite a job, sitting in the back seat of a Thud and flitting around in the darkness like an agitated mustelid, blasting them VC before they got a fix on your pos.

As for weasels and chicken, the real life, non-Disneyized relationship is far more direct than just lubrication of various orifices. A quick clamp on the vertebrae, ex-sanguination and then rapid ingestion of extra-rare pectoral muscles followed by equally rapid exfiltration to some convenient shady tunnel.


Comment from orabidoo
Time: March 20, 2012, 6:20 pm

There is a vid for just about anything these days.

Weasel in charge of chicken coop.
Parental warning: some murdelation evident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2plchCo8Q4M

Why weasel kilt the chicken?
was it the lack of federally subsidized algae?
was it a weasel rage? because the chicken looked different?
was it done on a bet?
was the weasel ululating before the heinous/delicious act?


Comment from Oldcat
Time: March 20, 2012, 7:16 pm

McGoo…

One chicken lays one egg in a day and a half.
the half chicken lays its half egg in a day and a half.

So in one day, the one chicken has laid 2/3 of its egg.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 20, 2012, 7:19 pm

If you can get used to the taste of goat, they are great to have around too. They produce milk, they’re really friendly, they’ll eat any weeds and crop your grass down without obliterating it like idiotic sheep, and they are fun to watch.

But I thought weasels were all eggsuckers… (ducks)


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: March 20, 2012, 8:01 pm

One minute you’re lubing a chicken up. The next you’re annexing Czechoslovakia. It’s a slippery slope. And not necessarily because of the olive oil.


Comment from orabidoo
Time: March 20, 2012, 8:19 pm

The sole purpose of goats is to assure the early demise of a goatherd. They will eat brambles, nettles, giant hogweeds, alder twigs etc… after they have eaten anything of value including brooms, cheesecloth, newspapers, fertilizer bags, etc.
They are truly excellent climbers, very motivated and fearless. They are awful at climbing down.
And obviously you were never head-butted by a smelly billy. No provocation necessary. They sneak like cats and hurl themselves at your wedding tackle at 30 mph.

Goats are not one notch on the desirability scale above beavers. The mule has got to be the most useful barnyard critter.

http://tinyurl.com/299f4p9


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: March 20, 2012, 9:48 pm

I wouldn’t mind renting a goat for a couple of days a month. The grass is starting to get a little on the lush side.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 20, 2012, 10:03 pm

We had a herd of goats when I was a little girl. Fainting goats, before they were internet famous.

They sometimes grow out of the fainting. Billy got me up against the side of the barn and paid me back for alllll the seizures I ever gave him.


Comment from Anonymous
Time: March 20, 2012, 10:25 pm

Billy got me up against the side of the barn and paid me back for alllll the seizures I ever gave him.

say no more, say no more…


Comment from Pupster
Time: March 20, 2012, 10:47 pm

Stoaty: Guess what?

Mapp: Chicken butt!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 20, 2012, 10:57 pm

Butted the living shit out of me, but I appreciate the ambiguity.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 21, 2012, 12:33 am

We had goats on the farm and they were great critters, maybe you had faulty goats. I do like a donkey though, they are good creatures, very gentle and kindly soul, the one we had. He was an ex kiddy ride mule and he was nice as can be. The horses that rented the pasture land were dumb as a salt lick though. Kept getting out too.

We only had one billy, a miniature. He was plenty mean and despite being small was stocky and tough as all get out. Him and the donkey were best friends, we’d come down and he’d be sleeping on TOP of the donkey.


Comment from Redd
Time: March 21, 2012, 1:52 am

Yeah, I had a bad experience when I was 5 with a couple of goats at a petting zoo. They didn’t hurt me – just started eating my scarf. However, I am a fan of this site: http://goo.gl/41qZ2

She’s my go to gal for all things goat related.


Comment from Oh Hell
Time: March 21, 2012, 3:12 am

I have had goats for over 25+ years and the ones that were stupid enough to try and knock me down lost their happy home pronto!! Most of them are very well behaved (try whispering “hamburger”… in their ears)
One of my FB friends does silk dyeing with her extra eggs. Don’t know how she does it but they look fabulous.


Comment from TwoDogs
Time: March 22, 2012, 5:20 pm

Stoaty, you need a pressure cooker. Egg age doesn’t matter then.

http://www.hippressurecooking.com/2011/04/hip-modernist-soft-medium-and-hard.html

Works like a champ !


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 22, 2012, 6:45 pm

Holy cow, TwoDogs! That’s fascinating. I have a pressure cooker.


Comment from Nina
Time: March 22, 2012, 9:15 pm

Never having grown my own eggs (well, never have had chickens that donated their eggs to my diet, I’ve made my own share of extremely small ova over the years), I’ve never heard of an egg skelter. I’m entranced!


Comment from TwoDogs
Time: March 23, 2012, 3:01 pm

Glad to be of service, m’lady. Let us know how it goes.


Comment from me
Time: March 26, 2012, 10:17 pm

When I first saw that egg skelter I thought it was a sonogram of Sandra Fluke’s ovary.

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