I gave away eleven roosters and sold two hens and three chicks  this past weekend.  Now, I am looking at my chickens and trying to decide if I want to sell anymore.  Some are older and no longer laying so they have to stay.  The 6 month old hens are the ones that I feel more comfortable selling.  I make sure I see the hen on the nest to verify she is a laying hen before I sell her.  That usually happens accidentally because I do not spend all my time out there checking to see who is laying.  When I see a much smaller egg in the nest, I know someone new is laying.  I actually found an egg one time from a Silkie that was about the size of a small marble.  Every once in awhile I use to find an egg that didn’t have the hard shell on the outside.  It just had the membrane on the outside and it was pretty tough but the egg was all wiggly.

I guess I could keep them all.  After all, I have buyers for my eggs and that gives me at least $40 toward the purchase of feed.  I probably spend more like 80.  I only get 16-18 eggs a day because:

I have 16 chicks that under 6 weeks and another group of about 18 that are about 3 or 4 months old.  One other group of about 14 should start start laying any time now.  Then I have about 10 that are not laying…too old.  And of course, there are the males which I would say is approximately 15.    So that leaves about 35 hens that could be laying.

I don’t sell the Silkie eggs because they are so small.  I use them for our consumption.  BTW, don’t make hard boiled eggs out of fresh eggs.  The shell is so difficult to get off.  I put some aside for about three weeks that I will boil.  Obviously, the egg on the right is the Silkie egg.

I read an article on line that said the eggs you get in the grocery store are sometimes 2 months old.  It said the farmer had 30 days to get the eggs to the wholesaler and the wholesaler had 30 days to get the eggs to the grocery store.   I wish I could remember where I read that so I could quote it to you.   Guess that’s why you can peel  the shell off pretty easily because they aren’t that fresh.

Did you know you can tell if an egg is spoiled by putting it in a bowl of water?  If it floats, it is spoiled.

I think I won’t sell anymore chickens for awhile.  If I look on Craigslist and someone wants something that I have, then I will respond to the email.  For instance, I have more white Silkies than anything now….I think.  So I would be willing to sell a few of them.   First I have to know if they are hens or roosters though so I need to wait a little longer until one either crows or tries to mate.

I do have one more Silkie hen sitting on six or seven eggs and she is due to start hatching on the 21st.  I so want some more buff colored Silkies and none of the eggs have hatched.  Darn it.

It is suppose to be my plan to breed the Silkies and sell them.  I still need to figure out a chicken yard plan to separate each color with one male and a couple of hens.   I bought straight run chicks from Leah and fortunately, I picked out just one male that is black and one male that is dark blue.  Then I have a light blue rooster but all the other light blue chicks were killed off by the chicken hawk before I could get my yard closed in.    So I need to purchase a couple of light blue hens.  I have plenty of white and a few buffs.  I am pretty sure all four of my Splash are females.     See below.

These black, grey and white chickens are Splash Silkies.  You can actually see three in the picture with one lurking in the doorway.   They are all about the same size so I do not suspect any of them are roosters YET.  I have been wrong more than once though.

These are a few of my white Silkies trying to get away from the Florida sun.   Off hand, I would say I must have about 15 of them.  It is amazing that they can stay so white all the time.  I recently put three smaller ones into this group and one of them must be a rooster because he was only in there about five minutes before he was trying to establish that he wanted to be on the top of the pecking order.  He was pecking at a chicken twice his size.  It was so funny to watch.  I separated him for half a day just because he was being so mean to the small ones.  That “time-out” seems to have done the trick.  He is now use to his new environment and not causing havoc.