My first chickens of the season have hatched. 3 Silkies and a Pekin.
I love chickens and I already have a number of broody hens but I will be trying not to hatch too many as I’m finding the bantams hard to rehome. If you are local & looking for Pekins or Silkies.. I have some to sell! I used to have a waiting list as long as my arm for them but seems the current trend is to the large “heritage breeds”. I’ve seen quite a few trends in my poultry breeding years. I’m sure the bantams will come back as they make wonderful pets, and, unlike the large birds, they dont require huge housing, don’t scratch your garden beyond repair and are more economic to feed. While their eggs are obviously smaller, I simply use 2 for 1 and they make fantastic egg salads.
I do have the larger breeds too, mainly orpington and wyandotte. I have set a few of their eggs under a broody silkie. I have to confess that the big fat orpington chickens are probably my favourites.
While on the subject of big hens.. we have 1 lady who, once a week, lays us an enormous egg. I presume it is the same hen and I dont know if she lays normal eggs as well but our best so far weighed in at 126 grams!!! It was 80mm long & 51mm wide. It seemed so huge to us that we thought this was possibly a record but an internet check found lots of large eggs including this statement “A spokesman for Guinness World Records said: ”The largest hen egg was a five-yolked egg measuring 31cm (12.2in) around the long axis, 22.8cm (9in) around the short and weighing nearly 340g (12oz)”. Can you imagine that? Given the average hen egg is 62 grams. Here’s what our big egg looked like amongst our standard eggs….
126 gram Egg in box with our standard size eggs (60-70g)
