So, a couple days after the girls started laying I decided to keep an egg journal. I was at the gas station, talking to my mom about our first eggs, and remembered how my friend would keep track of his hotrod's mileage/gas usage in a little notebook so he could see the effects of changes he made to the car's engine, etc. I thought, why not keep one for the girls!
We keep a little 3x5 spiral notebook with our egg basket. Every day, we note down how many we collected, as well as anything unusual that we'd like to record. For example, odd egg sizes, shapes, shell condition, location, etc. Inside the cover of the notebook, I listed all our chickens (11 buffs, 1 barred rock, 4 ameraucanas, etc) and their approximate hatch dates.
Hopefully, this little notebook will be useful in tracking egg production, as well as problems. For example, if we're both collecting eggs, we may not be mentioning to each other that we're seeing the occasional weak shell. If we don't see a pattern (seeing them more often, for example), we wouldn't necessarily know that there was a problem to be treated. We'll see if this helps at all. For the moment, it's just fun to look at the slowly climbing numbers as more girls start laying! And, we'll be able to see how many eggs they produce vs feed costs, which would be interesting to see (we're not doing this yet. Perhaps after the first of the year).
Do you keep track of the eggs you collect?
Egg journal, 7/20 - today
7/20 1st egg, found on ground
7/21 2, 1 had weak shell and was broken
7/22 0
7/23 1
7/24 1
7/25 3
7/26 2, 1 cracked but thick shell, added shavings
7/27 3
7/28 4, 1 double yolk lg as store xl(2.3oz)
7/29 3
7/30 3
7/31 2
8/1 3, 1 sm (1.5oz), 2 xl(2.3,2.4)
8/2 5
8/3 6
8/4 6
8/5 5
8/6 10, 1 thin shell and broken
8/7 7, 5 before 11a, 1 very sm,dark,speckled
8/8 8
8/9 11
8/10 8
8/11 11, 1 was GREEN! (1st green egg!)
6 comments:
Love the one green egg in the basket. Neat pic.
A good idea but, I don't think I'll keep track. Course, I'll be the #1 feeder/proprietor, anyway.
I'm so glad you're having way better luck than I did. Really.
Paula, have you decided where to get your new girls? As for eggs, it helps that we have 21 pullets... :)
This is hysterical because I also keep an egg log, just in my dayplanner. I've not kept up with the daily count, but I do record when we find more eggs than usual and the days of our first egg finds.
Man, yesterday, Deputy Dave found a WHOPPER of an egg. I took pictures and will post it this week. I could not believe how HUGE this egg was and we both pitied the gal that laid that monster. I took a picture of it laying next to the other eggs we'd gathered from the coop and it was amazing. They seem to be getting bigger and bigger. But, I never imagined they'd get as big as that one.
Anyway, excellent job with the egg journal...I found the gaps to be near identical with our own. Now we're finding up to 3-4 eggs in a day, at times. For about a week, I don't think we've passed a day without finding a couple of eggs.
Delicious awesome treasues!
I've had my girls for 3 1/2 years now and have kept an egg "calendar" since the very beginning. For the entire first year, I counted, noted specifics and *weighed* every single egg I got. (Can you say "nerd"?)
I have not regretted doing this for ONE SECOND - to this day, I look back on information gathered from earlier years and can tell you, for example, the precise start and stop days that my one, lone white-egg-layer laid her eggs (she takes annual sabbaticals, you see, lol)
Anyway, welcome to the very select, highly specific NERD CLUB. We always need new members.
Love how you detail some of the specifics!
:-)
Post a Comment