The Humor in Backyard Chickens

Do you see what I see? Yes, that is a chicken egg in our shed slash laundry room.

You see, our chickens are free roaming. I’m not talking free range as in enclosed with hundreds of other chickens in a building, I’m talking real free roaming.

Of course we have a coop for our chickens to live in but they always seem to find a way out. Maybe the open door plays a role?

Besides the fact that we cannot possibly grow vegetables in our backyard without a 99.47% chance they will be scratched up by chickens, I don’t mind them roaming our backyard.

By roaming our backyard I really mean our fenced in backyard as well as our neighbors yard, the alley, down the street and occasionally the front yard.

Usually our chickens will go back to their coop to lay in the hay but the other day, while removing clothes from the dryer, I saw the brown egg tucked away in the corner. How long it had been there, I do not know.

I don’t want to just toss the egg because of my uncertainty, so how do I check if the egg is okay before cracking it open? Well, it’s funny you ask. I just put the egg in a bowl full of enough warm water to completely cover it.

If the egg sinks, it’s still fresh. If it floats completely, you are probably dealing with a stink bomb.

If it only lifts up on one side it should still be good, just use it within two days. What do you think of my superb demonstration?

While we’re on the subject of eggs, I just want to go ahead and confess that I don’t wash my chickens eggs. Gross, right? Well, think again. As The Prairie Homestead shares, egg shells are actually porous and washing them (especially in cold water) causes any bacteria to leech into the egg. So unless I am dealing with a very soiled egg, I just put them in the fridge for later use. If I ever do need to clean one, I normally just use a paper towel to gently wipe off any dirty spots.

Do any of you have backyard chickens? Perhaps a goat? If we ever decide to get a goat, I wouldn’t settle for one until I found a goat like this.
p.s. Philip totally has one of those goat’s yell as a ringtone. We all just about die any time he gets a text. I’ve also been known to text him just to hear the goat yell. That’s normal, right?

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5 Comments

  1. I love this. I've been considering raising my own chickens, since it's allowed in my city. Why did she lay in your laundry room of all places? Do the other girls pick on her? haha

    How long do chicken eggs keep, unrefrigerated?

  2. Thanks for sharing your chickens with us. My husband and I started off in the city with 4 chickens, 2 goats and 2 bunnies on a small parcel of land. Now we live in the rural part of a small city on 2 1/2 acres. We now have 25 chickens and 11 goats and no bunnies. Be careful, raising chickens can be addictive:) before you know you have a huge flock of them:) As far as goats go you will need at least 2 goats they are herd animals and need companions The best goats for city life are mini goats such as 2nd or 3rd generation Mini-Nubians. They are a cross between Nubians and Nigerians. I love raising these goats, you gets lots of milk for their sizes, they do not need as much feed or land. Also they go great with chickens. The chickens break up there poo looking for morsels of grain and you end up with awesome compost to put on your garden.

  3. Actually, she doesn't get picked on nor picks on others. I really don't have an exact answer for how long chickens eggs keep. I've heard 3-5 weeks but we usually eat ours up before they have a chance to spoil.

  4. Chickens are so addicting! At one point we had 14 which was pretty crazy for our small-ish backyard. Your small farm sounds so great, we hope one day to live on some land and start a small farm.

  5. […] any tomatoes this spring. However, we still reaped a huge harvest of cherry tomatoes. Last year, our chickens roamed the backyard freely. That meant that not many vegetables were able to grow without being scratched up by the hens. A […]

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