Egg Rack

Just a quick one today for my fellow chicken keepers. We all know it can be a bit of pain keeping track of which eggs need to be used up first. I've previously solved the problem by keeping old egg boxes (labelled 1 and 2 for when the hens are particularly productive) in the fridge and having a system of going left to right, top to bottom while keeping the box hinge on the left. As a system it functions but isn't immediately obvious to visitors (or my husband so far as I can tell) and isn't particularly aesthetically pleasing either.

I've had my eye on the Omlet egg helter skelter for a while but £20 felt a bit steep so I was pleased to discover this Ebay shop. My egg rack arrived a couple of days ago and I'm delighted with it. The idea is you put new eggs on the left and take eggs to use from the right. When one is removed the others gently roll down to make room for fresh eggs. I love the simple, clean design and the fact that they're individually hand made, well worth the price I think.

Just one tip - make sure you explain to any 6 year olds in the house that although it's true that the eggs roll along the rack, it's probably best not to send them whizzing, theme park style, from one end to the other. This post ends here as I appear to have a floor to mop ....

Flippin' Heck Crispy!

Normally Crispy lays quite small eggs, about 55g which is on the cusp of Small and Medium in terms of supermarket eggs. Feathers lays massive eggs of around 65/70g which makes them Large. But Crispy excelled herself yesterday and laid this monster. It weighs about 80g which is off the scale and puts it in the Extra Large category.

I wasn't quite sure whether I should be delighted or concerned, I certainly felt somewhat guilty that I hadn't been out there mopping her fevered brow and telling her to breathe. There's a vague niggling worry that it can't be good for her, I was half expecting her to be walking like a chicken John Wayne but she seems quite active and jolly today.

I've tried to give a sense of scale in the photos, in the top one you can see how the monster egg doesn't fit into a standard size egg box, it won't sit in the compartments and I can't shut the lid. In the photo below, a standard Crispy egg is on the left, standard Feathers egg in the middle and monster Crispy egg on the right.

She's in the nesting box as I type, doing her bit for Norfolk Kitchen egg production, can't wait to see if we've got another monster!