You can't fool a Campine!

In the winter, when there is very little light, hens lay very few eggs.  I put a light in the Moop to fool them, and egg production did increase a bit.  But only BROWN eggs.  The Campines lay white eggs, and they were having none of it.  They can tell the difference between a light bulb and the sun!  For about six weeks, I got the occasional white egg, maybe one or two a week, but that was it.

Lo and behold, spring is upon us, the days are lengthening, and the Campines have decided to start laying again!  I don't have many left.  They are old hens, should have been put in the stew pot long ago, but they are my friends and I just didn't do it.  Some of these hens are hitting the five year mark.  And they are laying!  As a percentage of hens that are laying eggs each day, the Campines are laying more heavily than any of the other breeds.

I have named very few hens because they are impossible to tell apart.  But there are a few who are unique.  There is Fuzzy, who has fuzzy feathers around her neck, and Goldie, one of the four chicks who imprinted on me and who has unusual coloring, and there is Miss Blue who also has a fuzzy neck and beautiful blue gray feathers.  Miss Blue laid blue eggs until she quit laying altogether last summer.  I have thought that I should put her to rest.  I would get a pot of soup out of her, and I wouldn't have to feed her any more of that expensive certified organic soy-free feed.  But I didn't.

Friday I got a blue egg!  Well, I thought, that was a quirk.  Saturday I got another blue egg.  Is Miss Blue back in business?  We will see what is in the nest today.

One must just have faith in the girls.  I am not getting any more chicks this year, because I am unsure of whether or not the farm will sell, and the chickens are not part of the agreement with Steve.  So I am relying on my old girls to take care of my egg business.  They have gone from four a day to 16 a day in the last week.  You go, girls!  Three-egg omelet for breakfast today.

Note the blue egg from Miss Blue.