eggs

As hens age, their egg production decreases.  I only have 7 hens residing in the big chicken house and collect 4 or 5 eggs a day from them.  Since they are older, this seems about right.

A couple of days ago my nephew came to visit.  He has had a fascination with chickens since he was a child.  When he asked to go into the chicken house to look for eggs I said "Go ahead."

He returned with over 2 dozen eggs.  Since it was early in the day and I knew the hens weren't through laying eggs yet I was totally surprised with this collection.  I asked him where he found them and he said they were in the big chicken house...most of them in one nest?  I collect eggs every day from there so this was definitely an anomaly.  I asked him to show me where he found them.  Sure enough, the girls were using an old nest which I thought was abandoned and therefor I didn't check it daily.  Most of these eggs were well past the fresh stage!  All but a couple of them failed the water test miserably.  (Older eggs have a larger air sack and therefor turn upward when put in water.  The older the egg, the larger the air sack, the more they float.)

I know how a rotten eggs smells.  The smell lingers if one is broken accidentally.  I hard boiled these to minimize the smell and fed them back to the chickens.  They were far from first quality, but the chickens cleaned them up nicely.