Our journey into backyard chickens started this spring when we moved to Georgia and choose to live out in the country rather than in the city where my husband works. It was a sacrifice in some ways but we wanted the space for the kids to play, the safety it afforded us, and the chance to have chickens! We started with 6 chicks and things have grown as we have lost some to predators and added more to make up for the loss. It is chicken math! All told though it is working out wonderfully and we finally got our first whole egg from those chicks!
The egg on the left is a Maran egg from a Maran hen. They lay large very brown and sometimes spotted eggs like that one! The one on the right is the egg from the new laying chicken. We don’t know what one it is yet though! So far she has laid three small eggs like this, only the first one happened when she was on the high perch we think, it fell and shattered. The second one had just a small crack in it and this one has some scratches in it but is otherwise great! The chicken could be a speckled sussex, light Brahma, or black sextlink. All lay a shade of brown egg! We have some other pullets that should lay different colored eggs (even green!) but they might not start giving us eggs till late fall!
So far we have learned that start up costs for chickens can vary greatly. It can be costly to get started, not so much for the chickens, those are cheap enough and food isn’t costly but the shelter and food and water containers add up! Seems like we keep learning about crappy containers that either don’t hold up or that the chickens out smart!
In the end though, our free range organic chicken eggs will save us money over buying them from the store!
Not to mention the kids LOVE them, and specially love hunting for eggs each day!
