The $930 Egg

In less than fifteen minutes, with Phil doing nothing but watching while I milked Annabelle and Isaiah held her in place, I milked out 24 ounces. Three whole cups! (Up from 12 ounces the first day and 14 ounces yesterday.) I used a cup for cornbread, which I was able to make because ...

Today we got our first egg! We don't even have laying boxes built yet, because we've been a bit busy with other things, but Isaiah found a little brown pullet egg. It had a perfect shell, and every time I looked at it throughout the afternoon I had a happy feeling. Beautiful orange yolk on cracking it, too. We had laying hens, purchased as adults, in Boulder, but this was our first "raised from chick" egg.

After $800 in feed, plus $130 to buy the chicks, I hope the rest start laying soon. At this point, this was one expensive egg!

After we planted 23 trees (!) today, dinner was a celebration: sage pork chops (from our farm); kale (from our farm); cornbread (with egg and milk from our farm); and milk to drink (from our farm). After months with almost no milk, having a couple cups to drink a day, even among seven people, feels like an embarrassment of riches.



And now, in honor of our first egg, a few little facts about eggs.

Good quality eggs should have three parts within the shell: a watery part; a thicker, opaque part around the yolk; and the yolk itself. Yolks should ideally be dark yellow, almost orange, if the hen has enjoyed a healthy diet of bugs, growing plants, and good feed. If you have the opportunity to buy eggs from a farm, or to raise your own, you will probably be disturbed to see the difference between grocery store eggs and the home-grown type. There's really no comparison.

Battery-raised hens live in tiny cages (some so small that the hen cannot even turn around), under lights that artificially stimulate production. This seems quite inhumane. The next level of production is the "cage free" eggs. These hens probably do not ever see the outdoors, but they run around in large rooms. (A dead giveaway that the hens live indoors is when the box advertises "Vegetarian fed!" Hens are naturally omnivores, enjoying bugs and even meat. A hen that has only eaten vegetarian feed has been kept away from bugs. It's not a natural diet for a hen!) "Organic" eggs were simply raised from organic certified feed: it says nothing about the quality of life that the birds enjoyed.

A hen will lay about 600 eggs in her lifetime. Leghorns lay white eggs, and they lay almost all in the first two years of production. The cheapest eggs in the US are white because Leghorns are the most efficient layers. Rhode Island Reds (our type) lay brown eggs. It takes them a little longer to lay all 600 eggs, but they are not bad. Under identical conditions, the nutrients in white and brown eggs are identical; brown cost more not because of healthier eggs, but because of longer time (and higher feed costs) for similar production.

Eggs have a protective membrane around them. Washing the egg takes this away and makes it more susceptible to bacteria and spoilage. With the membrane, though, eggs don't need to be refrigerated, but will keep for months at room temperature. This has been a great help to me over the last few months, as we've lived without a refrigerator.

I like eggs as a great source of protein. I like egg whites in angel food cake and egg yolks in smoothies. I like their shape and their versatility.



Eat good eggs!