Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Are we ready, pawpaw?
Hello friends and welcome toChicken.
Every Day, a podcast for you,the backyard chicken enthusiast,
and mine.
Your host is my Pawpaw, gary,Gary Valerie of Senla Backyard
Chickens.
Here we have fun while sharingideas and learning how to care
for our foul-feathered friends.
Check out our videos at Senlathat's C-E-N-L-A Backyard
(00:24):
Chickens on YouTube, tiktok andFacebook.
So, without further ado, let'sstart today's show.
How was that?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hello friends, gary,
with CENLA, backyard Chickens
and the Chickens Every Daypodcast, I hope everybody's
doing great.
And if you did like I did andgot some chicks in the fall,
well, now you're at the pointthis spring where you should be
getting those first eggs.
Maybe you're close to gettingthem, so you're really anxious
about it.
So just be patient.
They're coming real soon, Ipromise.
Well, a few weeks ago I wasinvited to come speak at a
(00:56):
public library in a town aboutan hour away from here and I
gave a presentation a PowerPointpresentation to some elementary
children, children and theirparents, and it was a lot of fun
.
I really enjoyed doing that andthey're surprised.
For the kids at the end of itwas, I brought out two hens and
the kids got to pet them.
We got to talk about them.
The questions started flowing.
(01:18):
Most of the questions even camefrom the parents and a lot of
it was have to do with eggs.
So that's what we're going totalk about today the chicken
eggs.
It's not a real big deep diveinto them, but it gives you a
lot of it will have to do witheggs.
So that's what we're going totalk about today the chicken
eggs.
It's not a real big, deep diveinto them, but it gives you a
lot of information that you mayor you may not know about the
great egg.
Okay, one of the first questionsthat they asked was do I need a
rooster to have eggs?
(01:38):
And the answer to that is no,you certainly do not need a
rooster.
Just like a human womanovulates once a month, she
produces one egg.
A bovine or different animalslike that may ovulate a couple
of times a year.
Each time they will produce anumber of eggs.
Well, a chicken just happens toovulate almost every day.
(02:01):
About every 27 or so hours orso, maybe even a little bit
sooner, she's going to ovulateand she'll produce an egg.
She does not need a roosteraround to do that.
However, a rooster is needed ifyou plan to hatch those eggs
and get some chicks out of thedeal.
Next question how soon willthey start laying?
Well, a lot of that depends onthe breed.
(02:21):
There are breeds out theretoday like a leghorn, and a lot
of that depends on the breed.
There are breeds out theretoday like a Leghorn and Kana
that were specifically bred upover the years to produce the
maximum amount of eggs too.
We've got gnats that they can.
These chickens are going togive you five, six eggs a week.
No chicken gives you an eggevery day.
Heritage breed chickens likemost of us have at home the
(02:45):
Delawares, the Bard Rock, rhodeIsland, red, new Hampshire's,
things like that they're goingto give you four to five eggs a
week and that's sometimes.
That's a good number with them.
So no chicken is going to giveyou that each and every week.
Okay, how can I tell if we'regetting ready?
Chickens give you a few signsto let you know if they're
(03:07):
getting ready.
One is her cones and wattleswill take a sudden growth spurt,
turning very, very dark red.
If it happens to be those typeof cones and wattles on them,
you know your hen's gettingready.
One of the most telling thingsis that she will start doing the
submissive behavior.
You'll come by one day and allof a sudden she squats.
That's a submissive behaviorand they submit to roosters if
(03:30):
they have any roosters around.
Her hormones are kicking in.
She's getting ready to startovulating, getting ready to
start laying those eggs.
She may even start hangingaround the nest box.
She may even sing the chickensong a couple of times.
All of this is her bodypreparing, getting ready to lay
some eggs.
Next question what about myfirst eggs?
Those could sometimes be asurprise.
(03:52):
A lot of times you're gonna getwhat we call a fairy egg and
that's a little tiny egg likethat.
Most of the time the eggs noteven gonna have a yolk inside of
it, just gonna be a very smallegg.
Sometimes you'll get ashell-less egg that doesn't have
a shell on the back of it.
But be patient.
If you know you got your birdsare good and healthy and getting
good, healthy food, the shell'scoming, don't worry about that.
(04:14):
The next one oh, how do I knowif the eggs I have are good and
fresh?
One of the easiest things thatwe do is called a float test.
You take an egg and yousubmerse it in water.
If it lays down flat in thatglass of water, it's a very
fresh egg.
If it tilts itself up but stilltouches the water, it's got a
little bit of age to it.
(04:34):
If it floats all the way to thetop, probably not a great idea
to eat that egg.
It's got too much air inside ofit.
What happens to an egg when achicken lays an egg?
There are literally thousandsof teeny, teeny, tiny pores that
are in this egg and she layswhat's called a bloom.
That's an outer coating, that'sclear, and it seals in that egg
(04:56):
and it seals out bacteria.
It seals out oxygen.
As the egg matures, this bloomslowly starts to deteriorate.
The pores start to get biggerand bigger until they start
touching one another.
Air and oxygen is allowed tocome in.
The way nature works this.
By the time oxygen comes in,the chick has grown enough and
(05:16):
matured enough inside the eggthat it can fight off any
unwanted bacteria.
So the oxygen shows up just inthe right time for this little
animal to start breeding.
It's really an amazing thing.
Ah, how many will they lay?
Or do they lay every day?
We answered that question awhile ago.
No, they do not.
Do they lay year-round?
(05:39):
Well, the answer to that is no.
There's all kind of things thatcan stop a chicken from laying.
Stress will stop a hen fromlaying.
If you have dogs that comearound, stress your chickens out
.
If birds of prey are flyingaround a lot, they see them.
They stress your chickens a lot.
If it's too hot, it stressesthe chickens a lot.
All kind of things will keepour birds from laying.
(06:01):
Most notably, an ovulation fora chicken is determined by the
amount of sunlight that shereceives.
For good egg laying, a henneeds 16, 18 hours a day to
really do the max production.
Most of the chicken houses forproduction forms will have
artificial lighting in to dothis.
This is Louisiana.
At our best we're gonna have 14, 15 hours or so, so it's really
(06:26):
not optimum For that.
You get further up in thenorthern hemisphere in the
summer and you get a few morehours of daylight, but they
don't lay year-round.
When the winter comesespecially, it starts getting
dark and they're not going tolay as much.
So if you want them to lay, youneed to kind of use a little
supplemental lighting in there,and you can check out my videos.
I have a video that talks aboutthat and there's specific ways
(06:48):
you want to do that to be asgentle on your chickens as you
can, specific ways you want todo that, to be as gentle on your
chickens as you can.
Oh, a great story you're goingto love to hear about.
You may have already heardabout it.
When COVID happened, thechicken boom went crazy.
People started buying chickensand raising them up, thinking
they were going to get their ownfresh eggs.
It was kind of like things werehappening with the toilet paper
(07:10):
.
People wanted more and morechickens, so they just snatched
everything up.
They're afraid they're going torun out of eggs.
One of the unfortunate parts ofthat happened is these people
started getting on the internet,youtube especially, and
throwing out these videos ofconspiracy theories.
The most popular one was thatthe United States government
(07:31):
decided it would make Purinawho's been around for what
almost 200 years has a very bigreputation, a very big name, to
protect, but anyway made them.
Well, first off, they said thatthey own Purina, which they
don't.
They're a corporation.
They do not own the corporation, but they made Purina put
something in their chicken feedto make chickens stop laying,
(07:55):
and specifically backyardchickens like the ones that you
and I have, not the chickensthat go through the production
farms.
So apparently the United Statesgovernment were going hey, all
these people with two, three,four chickens in the yard,
they're gonna wreck the economyif we don't do something about
this, so we're gonna make themstop laying.
So, and then they got on theinternet, they printed out these
(08:17):
papers and see, I showed you.
This is proof that that Purinais being forced to do this and
this is why our chickens are notlaying eggs.
Sure enough some person goes ohmy goodness, I feed them this
brown to feed.
They're not laying.
So she changes out.
Two or three weeks later theystart laying again and she
assumes, or he assumes, that isthe reason why.
(08:38):
So they throw a video out thereand the conspiracy just rolls
on and on and on and it wasalmost laughable.
The unfortunate thing about itis so many people thought that
this was so.
These conspiracy theorist guysjust really seemed like they
knew what they were talkingabout and I'm sorry they just
didn't.
You cannot convince me that thegovernment came down and said
(09:00):
you are going to make these poor, poor people in the backyard
their chickens are going to quitlaying because there's going to
be trouble if they don't.
It just didn't happen.
But I will tell you one thingthat will make a difference.
It's the quality of the feed.
Purina did a test a few yearsago and I think they took four
flocks.
Each flock has six chickens init and every manufacturer of
(09:23):
chicken food, including Purinaand some of the major brands,
always has their bargain brandthat's a lot cheaper than their
highest quality brand.
And look at the tags, folks.
Look at the ingredient tags andyou'll see the difference
between fillers and actualingredients on there.
But anyway, so they fit two ofthese, these Fox, the bargain
brand of food.
They fit two of these flocks.
(09:45):
They're their highest brand offew they're they're most
nutritious.
That they call I think it'slayena is the particular one
that they call their high-endfood.
At the end of the year they didall the calculations.
Well, come to find out.
Because chicken eats to theircaloric requirements, they ate
more of the cheaper brand andless of the more expensive brand
(10:07):
that had the better nutrientsin it and so they kind of offset
that way.
And, more importantly, theyeach average six dozen more eggs
with the better feed than theydid with the lower feed.
So you could certainly feedyour chickens a lower upgrade of
food if eggs is not your, yourbig concern.
But understand that this feed,that they're going to eat a
(10:30):
little more of it and they'renot going to lay quite as well.
So understand all of that goingin.
I Get asked a lot of time andsomeone at that at the library
asked our chickens eggs.
Our chickens eggs that we getat home or out on the farm,
better for you than store-boughteggs, and nutritionally they're
almost identical.
Some of the differences are,and nutritionally they're almost
(10:52):
identical.
Some of the differences are mybird's free range, so they have
a varied diet.
They get a high-quality feedthat stays in there.
They eat it as they want, butthen they go outside and they're
eating bugs and worms and grassand crickets and all kind of
things.
They're scratching in the dirt,they're doing chicken and
whenever this happens thingslike the shells usually get a
little bit thicker.
The omega-3s are usually alittle bit more in these eggs.
(11:16):
The good cholesterol levelsboost up a little bit in them
and that's all because of thevariation in their diet.
They get a really nice varieddiet where birds that are in
these chicken houses.
They get fed a specific dietand that's all they eat until
it's time to go to the butchershop.
So these eggs.
There is a difference in theeggs as far as the quality of
(11:37):
them goes.
What else do we have?
Oh yeah, beta-carotene issomething that's higher in these
eggs as well.
Farm eggs are almost alwaysgoing to be fresher.
I sell eggs out here.
The average age of my eggs aregoing to be about a week to a
week and a half old.
Some of them are going to bethat very day that I put out
there in the egg stand.
(11:58):
By law the date on an eggcarton is stamped the day that
it is packaged, not the day thatit is laid.
It can be laid one day and aweek later it can be packaged.
The average date at thesupermarket is four to six weeks
on a carton of eggs and if youlook at that carton it'll have a
number on it and let's say thatnumber says 254.
(12:21):
Those eggs were packaged, notlaid.
They were packaged on the 254thday of the year.
If the number is 007, they werepackaged on January 7th, the
seventh day of the year.
So understand how these eggpackaging work.
I love selling my eggs.
People talk about them all thetime.
It's a wonderful thing.
I love having these chickensout here.
(12:41):
I really hope you're enjoyingyour birds as well.
I hope this thing, this littletalk about eggs, made a little
sense to you and you enjoyed it.
Thank you, guys so much.
Have a wonderful day and we'lltalk with you soon.
Bye-bye.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's all we have
time for today.
I really hope you enjoyedlistening to the podcast.
Be sure to watch our videos.
So, on behalf of my Papa, gary,and me, sylvia, thanks for
listening.