Jackpot

Tamarin comes in from the barn this morning excited as could be, " I got a jackpot!" She has the eggs wrapped in her shirt like every morning. I tell her, " Great! Go put them in the cartons." I continue to put dinner in the crock pot. I hear her counting over my shoulder.

" Mama, what comes after 13?"
" 14."
" 14, 16."
" 15."
" 15,16. I got 16 eggs!"
Thinking she must be counting the ones that were already in the carton as well I simply reply, "That's great!"
" And they're tiny! They were in a bucket in the barn!"
She now has my full attention, " Really?"
She wasn't kidding, this is what I found when I looked over her shoulder, plus a few full size eggs.

 

Now many of you are probably thinking 'Jackpot!' just like Tamarin was. I was thinking, "Crap." Yes, a haul of eggs is reason to celebrate, but let's back up for a minute and discuss the animal chicken.

Now everyone knows chickens lay eggs. What you may not know is they DO NOT need a rooster to lay an egg. The female will lay eggs on her cycle, however frequent that may be. It is no different than some other animals in the world such as humans (Our eggs just don't have shells, but I'll let you put those pieces together on your own). So a chicken will lay usually 3-8 eggs a week, depending on the breed. The eggs in the store come from birds in places like, this (or worse, but I thought I'd post one that wouldn't upset people as much) -

They have no access to roosters..... errr... should I say roosters have no access to them. Anyway, this is why you will always get a nice yolk from your store bought eggs. Here is where my feeling of  'crap' comes in. We have roosters and they have access to all of our hens. Chickens' instincts are to lay on around a dozen eggs at a time. It increases their chances of having an offspring make it to adulthood. A mama chicken can't protect chicks if they start hatching and the last one hatches a week or more later, she can't get off the nest until the last one hatches. So a chicken finds a nice hiding spot and begins to lay her eggs there. After they have a nice collection of eggs, about a week or week and a half later that is when they lay on them beginning incubation. She will only get off this nest once a day to get a little food, a drink of water and take a MASSIVE poop. Then right back to the nest.

So if you haven't figured it out by now, there is a worry when you find a collection of a dozen or more eggs that are obviously from the same chicken (or mostly from the same chicken, they are great at adopting other hen's eggs) in a very good hiding spot. You may crack it open to find this,

 

or any of the number of phases in between. I attempted to candle the eggs. Candling is where you attempt to shine a light through the egg and see what is inside. I cannot find my little flash light that I used when we were incubating, so I did the best I could with a large one. Pretty sure there was nothing in there I held my breath and cracked it open.......



Breathing a big sigh of relief I went about making my morning omelet.

 

While I am not interested in finding developing chicks in my eggs, did you know in some parts of the world it is a delicacy? I'm all for trying new things, but you can keep that one o.O