I Am So Beyond Ready

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Chickens Have Earlobes?

I'm reading until I dream even more of chickens!  Then yesterday while talking to my farming friend, Betsy, I heard an interesting fact...you can tell what color your eggs will be according to the color of the hen's earlobes!  First of all I had no idea they had ear lobes.

So I came home and did a little research...and sure enough she was right.

 

Before you get too excited...no these are not my eggs...they came from Kroger.  But soon, very soon those little peepers will be living the life in the backyard.

 

Some interesting facts that I am sure someday will end up as answers on Jeopardy.

 

Eggs shells are made of calcium carbonate.  The white shells have no brown pigment over the surface or blue within the shell.

 

Egg color is often (but not always) tied to the chickens earlobe color.

white=white eggs

red=brown eggs

 

The pigment is not part of the egg shell but is more like paint on the surface.  You can even wipe your eggs and make the color lighter if you catch them just after then hen has laid them. 

 

Eggs are darkest in the fall and winter when the hens are laying less eggs.  In late spring and summer they are laying more heavily and their 'paint' gets used up.  And older hens produce less pigment.

 

Blue egg shells actually contain a by product of the chickens production of bile.  It is not a coating like the brown eggs have it is throughout the eggs shell.

 

Now we are all going to win big money on Jeopardy.

Run Construction and Coop Attaching

We called out the big guns today...Bryce for muscle, Emmy for logistics, and Michael was our photographer.  Mark and I argued...just a smidge.  Simply because we had to do some revamping because the kit didn't quite come from the factory like we ordered...the door was in the wrong spot, which made things just a little challenging.  And add in the fact that we were putting it on frozen ground that had lots of hooves in it.  We were also working against time...Mark had to be at work at noon and the weather forecasters are saying we are getting some ice and 4-8 inched of snow in the next few days.

 

I think we put these little ends on two or three times until we finally got them right.

 

We needed to get as much accomplished as we could before Mark had to go to work at noon.  So it was early rising for everyone.

 

Everyone had their turn using the drills.  We switched pushers too.

 

Emmy trying to do a  little research to see if she could find out what was wrong and how to fix it.

I was thrilled with the weather.  Mild overcast morning with the temps in the 40's...way better than the delivery day.

 

Emmy caught taking a coffee break.

 

Now she is back on the job!

 

Maybe all we needed was a hammer drill...worked wonders.

 

Caught me supervising.

 

Have you ever tried digging frozen ground?

 

All that needs to be done now is to put the preditor screen all around, landscape around it and we are in business.

I'm loving it!  And we did it without anyone getting mad and quitting.  Mark even made it to work on time.