Elwood laid an egg…
November 5th, 2009
…or maybe it was Jake. They are only a month and a half late compared to our other hens. I was starting to think there was something really wrong with them. The color of the egg is a pale blue green. Feeding them for another month and a half without them laying cost an additional 2 dollars each. Before, when we worked out the cost for raising our hens until they laid eggs, we just averaged the price for them all. In actuality Elwood and Jake cost about two dollars more than all the other chicks. So if you take those two figures into account, it cost us $20 to raise Elwood and Jake to egg laying age. I guess you just have to pay more for the special colored groovy eggs. If you were a professional egg farmer and Araucanas really do start laying later, it wouldn’t be worth it for your money.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:19 am
Satisfaction of raising your own beautiful and nutritionally superior eggs – priceless!
November 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Yeah!!! Easter eggs! I read that Araucanas are called Easter Egg Chickens because of their colorful eggs. We have a bunch of them, so it’s interesting to know that they will be late layers. That’s disappointing, though, because I am so excited to start seeing eggs, and I know I’ll have to wait till next spring anyway, and even longer for the Araucanas… If you can, I’d love a pic of your chickens posted, or email me – I haven’t seen a chicken post with a pic of your birds in a while, and you know I’m all into chickens these days!! I’m curious what your Araucanas (Jake & Elwood) look like now -are they pretty birds? Are they friendly? Thanks!! Sorry for being curious! =)
~Lynn
November 6th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Leigh- That’s true! Lee and I were really excited to get our first colored egg. Funny thing was that I sent Lee to the coop to lock the chickens up that night. I told him to recheck the nesting boxes to see if there was any late eggs. He came in with a huge grin on his face. Here I was just about convinced that Jake and Elwood were hiding their eggs from me.
November 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Lynn- I will go try and get some pictures of them. They are the most spooky of our chickens. Why I don’t know because they were handled a lot as chicks. You might get a better feel for the breed since you have more than us. Maybe my Jake and Elwood are flukes and not all Araucanas lay later. I can’t even imagine how cool your egg cartons are going to look all filled up with your pretty colored eggs.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Robin,
I have been reading other blogs & learned that other people’s Araucanas lay later than other chickens. Many months later. So yours are normal after all!
-Lynn
November 7th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Lynn- YEAH! I don’t have stunted chickens after all, just normal ones. LOL I don’t really know a whole lot about the Araucana breed.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Layla was excited by your egg pictures. She told me that “Auntie Robin’s chickens poop eggs from their bums.” I thought it was funny.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:51 am
I will have to bring her over a blue egg. That ought to make her even more excited about eating eggs then she already is!
January 26th, 2010 at 1:35 am
[...] has never laid an egg. Jake and Elwood are our two Araucana hens. Elwood only started laying November 5th, which was a month and a half late compared to all our other hens. As the months went on Lee [...]