My Hens are on Strike and My Roosters are Making My Mouth Water

Spring has finally happened here at the homestead. It’s always a busy time, full of babies, and garden chores.

We purchased an incubator, and will be trying to hatch our own eggs for the first time. My hens, who have been laying beautifully all winter must have caught wind of my plan and some of them have decided to go on strike. My 3 White Leghorns are still laying, but my 2 Rhode Island Red hens are striking. I also have a Buff Rock hen, but since she was injured, she hasn’t laid anything, and even if she was laying, she’s not letting the roosters anywhere near her. So, instead of the 6 eggs per day I was hoping for, I am getting about 3 per day. Not as many as I wanted, but the hatch will go on as planned.

If you know me, you know that I hate my roosters. I have 4 Rhode Island Red roosters and each one is meaner than the other. They are the product of buying a straight run of reds so that I could have 1-2 rooster, but 4 of the 6 chicks turned out to be roosters. As soon as I have chicks from the eggs, these roosters, yes, all 4 of them will be culled. I will admit, I have never done this before and I am a little intimidated by it.

So, with the Leghorn hens, and the Red Roosters, I was wondering what our chicks will look like. I googled to see what the chicks may look like and found this- a black chick?! Too freakin' cool!

image from: http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=230028


We are definitely keeping our fingers crossed for at least one black chick.

Coming up on the Homestead: I’ll be starting my tomatoes and peppers in the house, my spuds are sprouting and ready for planting, and I will be making my own laundry detergent for the first time. I also want to talk about the herbs I have chosen for the herb garden and why.



P.S. We had 5 kittens the other night from our resident mama Sheba. Too Cute- Here’s some pictures!

Dehydrating Eggs

I have too many eggs in the fridge, and since the power can be tricky around here, especially during the spring storms, I try to can or dehydrate everything. The directions I have followed for dehydrating my eggs are here: http://www.dehydratorbook.com/dehydrate-eggs.html

Since I have so many eggs, one fruit leather tray, but 5 dehydrator trays, I chose to scramble the eggs (without milk), and cook the eggs on the griddle w/o grease or butter. Then off to the dehydrator. DO NOT RUSH THIS PROCESS!!! If your eggs are not fully dehydrated, they will mold and ruin the entire batch. At this point, Abbey says they look like corn flakes. I have a small table-top dehydrator, and loaded to capacity, this takes between 16-18 hours.

(right out of the dehydrator)

(This is powedered in the blender)

Once they are fully dehydrated, put them in the blender and powder them...This should only take a few seconds. If they don't powder quickly, you may have to dehydrate them some more. The last step is to store them. The website said to store them in a jar or container. I am going to vaccuum seal them in bags marked with how many eggs are contained. And you're done!

To Use: 1 Tbsp egg powder = 1 egg....to reconstitute, mix 1 part egg to 3 parts water. Obviously you can't fry them again, but will be great in baking of all sorts.

In the future, I would like to dehydrate just the egg whites (perhaps dehydrate the yolks separately). I may also scramble both the reconstituted eggs vs. Fresh eggs to see the differences in taste and texture. Until then, Stay Tuned!