Wednesday, June 06, 2012

I am loving the green eggs.

Both my lavender araucanas are laying, and yesterday there was a third green egg in the nesting box, which means that one of the black araucana crosses is also laying lovely green eggs. In fact, in the egg cupboard we only have green eggs! I was so hoping that when the 'Al-Blacks' started to lay they would lay green eggs as well. King Bertie was their dad and I'd read that they carry the egg colour of the dad, but I had no idea if this was right or not. In their case it would seem it is. Result.

These three are so small that they slip through the holes in the egg cupboard.
 It looks like we won't need to buy any eggs this year either. In the 6 years that I've been keeping chickens we've not had to buy a single egg. Some of mine seem to lay all winter. Now we don't have enough eggs to give away, like we do in the summer, but we definitely have enough for us.


This morning we had another successful Alpaca mating. True Glow came up to 'say hi' and Cocoa lay down for him this time. He also had a 'spit off' with Vienna.
In the world of alpacas, if the lady alpaca is pregnant, she doesn't want anything to do with the man alpaca and will spit at him. As a rule of thumb, you do a couple of spit offs after mating and if the lady spits both times you can fairly safely assume she's pregnant.
It's not fail safe and you can have a vet test done, but the spit off is free so we're going with that!!
Lloyd and Richard made a new boudoir for the lucky couple, and it worked a treat! The smaller the space the less the poor man has to chase the female!
I considered lighting some scented candles but they managed just fine without them.

10 comments:

  1. I love collecting our eggs and feeling the simple abundance that such a great hobby can provide. We also have one chook who lays greeny Arucuana style eggs - they are so quaint :-) We've only been keeping chooks for 18 months now (and we only have four) so it's still very much a novelty for me. Just recently Hubby put up a small shed to house them which works way better than the little hutch we used initially - I don't have to bend down to clean it for a start! Thanks for sharing your "weefarm" tales... most enjoyable. xx

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    1. that novelty feeling will perhaps never go away! Six yeas in and I still feel there's nothing much beats the feeling of a warm egg in the hand.

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  2. Anonymous1:24 pm

    LOL scented candles....I now know lots more about Alpacas! I love those green eggs - now we know what kind of chooks Dr Seuss had :)

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    1. I know! Everytime I get one I think of green eggs and ham!

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  3. Thanks for giving me a laugh after the awful dentist visit (bad teeth, not bagging dentists Lloyd, I promise....)

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    1. Oh no! poor you - I hope your teeth are feeling better now. I got my teeth bleached once years ago when lloyd had just got a new machine when we lived in Glasgow. It turns out I have sensitive teeth and it was absolutely agony for a day and night. NEVER again. Mine was self inflicted as well. So you have my sympathy - sore teeth are no joke. But glad you had a wee laugh!

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  4. That is so cool that your chickens keep you in eggs year round. What a wonderful situation as you so obviously care for them and they in turn care for you. The green eggs are lovely, too!

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    1. I think they take turn about! Some moult and have a rest then the others take over once the moulty ones start to lay again. But I do love my girls!

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  5. Anonymous6:58 am

    Green eggs, marvelous! Glad the alpaca mating is going well, I am in the process of hunting down some alpaca to spin, very exciting!

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    1. Oh, I could give you some. It wouldn't have been processed at all - just all natural, and I have no idea how much you'd want, but Im sure we could send you some to give it a go!

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I love it when you leave me comments, it lets me know there are folk out there reading my ramblings! Thank you, I appreciate them loads and loads
Laura x