Farm life is lots of things. Most folks know and reaffirm to us, “Farm life is so busy!” Yep! 100%!
It’s also very cyclical. Certain things happen alongside the seasons, and it really is so interesting to witness the ebb and flow from year to year. Sometimes we change things to better mesh with seasonal changes. And sometimes we find a groove that we really like, and we try to stick with it.
One of the “grooves” is how we manage our laying hen flocks. Chickens don’t lay eggs forever, so it’s helpful to track ages and keep adding young hens so that egg production doesn’t fall off. We tried a variety of strategies to manage this in our early years. It took, oh, almost a decade probably, to finally land on what we think will be our go-to procedure for the foreseeable future, and that is, every April, we order in new little day-old fluff-ball chicks, then they grow up and around September or October, they start laying eggs. Once they’re really up and going, we then retire the old flock by rehoming the old girls as backyard pets. They are, after all, only 18 months old, so actually not “old” at all.
But we find that at that age, these older hens really begin laying pretty gigantic eggs, but not as often—we may only get an egg every 2 or 3 days, versus just about every day. And it’s a whopper—jumbo or even a super jumbo, meaning it might be the equivalent weight of 1 and a half “regular” size eggs! And we have to use special cartons to be able to fit those in. And because Mrs. Hen will eat the same amount of feed over the 3 days, we have to charge more for those massive eggs. Most folks just want plain ol’ large or even extra-large eggs, not so much jumbos. At that age, they make lovely backyard birds and now that we have been doing this for a handful of years, we have lots of repeat customers looking for these pretty little hens.
So it works. But it isn’t easy. You see, just as old hens lay giant eggs, young hens lay little tiny eggs, and so for about a month or two, as the new girls begin shifting to producing normal size eggs and we hang on to the older girls so we don’t end up with a giant gap in egg production, we end up with a LOT of weird overlap in sizes. I won’t bore you with all the technical considerations, but here’s how we finally figured out how to manage it. We mix sizes! And we weigh the cartons to ensure the minimum carton weight meets the standard for “Large” eggs: 24 oz per carton.
The funny thing is that we’ve actually been doing this for a while, but only with a single older flock, so you probably didn’t notice because their eggs didn’t vary in size so much. Ever since springtime, our “Large” carton has really had an average weight closer to or even over the “Extra Large” standard. We changed to a mixed size standard then to help manage the craziness that is egg inventory. And we figured that we’re ok with our customers getting a great deal (extra large eggs for the price of large!!) if it means we have one less “inventory item” to track and deal with.
But now you’ll notice a bit more variation in size within the carton, and the overall egg size may drop just a touch as we switch over to this younger flock, but it will still meet a net minimum of 24 oz per carton. But don’t worry. Farming is cyclical, remember? When the weather gets cool, hens need more calories to stay warm. So they tend to consume more feed, which means they take in more protein overall. More protein means… bigger eggs!
Our goal is to supply minimum “Large” equivalent eggs for $5.50/dz. We’ll keep an eye on that carton weight to make sure it’s happening. If here through the autumn we see a drop, we may downgrade carton size to medium if needed, but if this year is like other years in the past… those girls will probably be up and running here in no time.
This is the first year we’re going to attempt sticking with “large” all the way through the transition period from flock to flock, and we plan to accomplish this by keeping the older girls a bit longer than usual. But this means you may notice a bit more size variation within the carton than normal. You might find it a rather enjoyable experience, though, because different size eggs make jobs in the kitchen more customizable. A smaller-size boiled egg for a snack. A larger-size egg for omelets. A middle-size egg for baking.
Welcome to the ebb and flow journey of natural farming! We hope you enjoy the eggs!!
