Egg prices Soar

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

This bird flu scares the shit out of me. I have a pretty large flock of different varieties. I even have a guinea hen in the mix. When it is chick time I can’t seem to leave the store without at least 4. My last haul was 7 Easter Eggers. I don’t even like eggs.

 I’ve been trying to think of a way to keep them all safe and now it seems like I need to work harder to do that as, according to that map, cases are spreading closer to my state. Sometimes birds get in their runs to eat any food that they’ve left so I’m thinking the first thing may be to try to bird proof them.

@"TheRedneck" I’d be interested in seeing your thread on the homemade incubator if you decide to do one. I don’t have a 3D printer but I do like to see how other people put stuff together. We’ve been thinking of buying an incubator but haven’t decided which one to get. My neighbor has game hens so he hatches his the old fashioned way. He took a few of my silkie eggs and put them under one of his hens for me. Hopefully they hatch.

My Brother's chicks are doing great. He has quite a few double yolkers.

The layers he has now, are the ones he incubated from the eggs his hens produced. He has a couple that are brooders, and he is letting them do their thing.

He gets about 30 to 35 eggs a day. He is a fanatic about what he feeds them, and is all about them being cage free and non GMO.

All that and he does not sell them. Neighbors and friends are the beneficiaries of his hard work.

He said that is why God has made his hens so productive.

In the last couple of years I’ve switched to organic feed. Before that all I ever fed was scratch feed. My chickens were never healthy and they didn’t live long. I got to reading and found out a lot of the stuff in there wasn’t good for them. Now they eat organic layer pellets and all flock crumbles and some of the vegetables I grow in my garden. I can’t free range here as much as I’d like. I had them out a few years ago and a bobcat came and snatched one before I could do anything. We decided after that to make runs in the garden for them. It helps with insect control and they get extra stuff to eat.

I give eggs away too. There are way to many for us especially since I don’t really eat them and just use a few here and there for baking. My husband has trying to get me to sell some and he brings up a good argument that it would help with the feed bill.

Good feed is not cheap. You may be able to write it off in your taxes. Neighbors and friends really look forward to the eggs. In fact some say they are so spoiled with my Brother's eggs, that they cannot tolerate the store bought ones any more.

There is a difference.