The Backyard Homestead

by Carleen Madigan

  Each hatchery has its favorite hybrid. Although hybrids are generally more efficient at producing meat and eggs than a pure breed, they will not reproduce themselves. If you want more of the same, you have to buy new chicks from the hatchery.

  Endangered Breeds

  Many dual-purpose breeds once commonly found in backyards are now endangered. Because these chickens have not been bred for factory-like production, they’ve retained their ability to survive harsh conditions, desire to forage, and resistance to disease.

  The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy keeps track of breeds and varieties it believes are in particular danger of becoming extinct and encourages breeders to join its poultry conservation project. Among the breeds on its list is the Dominique, sometimes incorrectly called “Dominecker,” the oldest American breed. A few years ago, it almost disappeared, but it is now coming back thanks to the efforts of conservation breeders. Canada’s oldest breed, the Chantecler, experienced a similar fortunate turn of fate.

  Whereas the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy specializes in dual-purpose breeds, the Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities specializes in tracking and conserving endangered exhibition chickens.

  Exhibition Breeds

  Exhibition chickens are bred for beauty rather than their ability to efficiently produce meat or eggs. Some of the same breeds kept for meat and eggs are also popular for exhibition, although the strains are different. Commercial strains used for egg or meat production are often hybrids, but even the pure production breeds are not necessarily true to type. Exhibition strains, on the other hand, are more true to type but less efficient at producing eggs or meat.

  Even among the exhibition breeds, some lay better than others. Exhibition breeds in the Mediterranean class lay better than most other show breeds, even though they don’t lay as well as production flocks of the same breed. Similarly, among exhibition birds, the Cornish and Cochin are more suitable than many others for meat production.

  Bantams are miniature exhibition chickens weighing 1 to 2 pounds. They are popular because they eat less and require less space than larger chickens. The shrill crowing of a bantam cock, however, is more likely to irritate neighbors than the lower-pitched crowing of a larger rooster.

  Because dual-purpose breeds have not been bred for factory-like production, they’ve retained their ability to survive harsh conditions, desire to forage, and resistance to disease.

  Egg Production

  A pullet starts laying when she is 20 to 24 weeks old. Her first eggs are quite small, and she will lay only one egg every three or four days. By the time she is 30 weeks old, her eggs will be normal in size and she will lay about two eggs every three days.

  When a pullet is born, she carries in her body as many as 4,000 ova, or undeveloped yolks. When the pullet reaches laying age, one by one the ova grow into full-size yolks and drop into a 2-foot-long tube called the oviduct.

  As a yolk travels through the oviduct, it becomes surrounded by egg white and encased in a shell. About 24 hours after it starts its journey, it is a complete egg ready to be laid.

  A hen cannot lay more eggs than the total number of ova inside her body. From the day she enters this world, each female chick carries with her the beginnings of all the eggs she can possibly lay during her lifetime. Few hens, however, live long enough to lay more than 1,000 of the possible 4,000 they started with.

  The Life of a Layer

  A good laying hen produces about 20 dozen eggs in her first year. At 18 months of age, she stops laying and goes into a molt, during which her old feathers gradually fall out and are replaced with new ones. Chickens molt once a year, usually in the fall, and the process generally takes two to three months. Because a hen needs all her energy to grow replacement feathers during the molt, she lays few eggs or none at all. Once her new feathers are in, she looks sleek and shiny, and she begins laying again.

  After her first molt, a hen lays larger but fewer eggs. During her second year, she will lay 16 to 18 dozen eggs. Some hens may lay more, others fewer. Exactly how many eggs a hen lays depends on many factors, including breed and strain, how well the flock is managed, and the weather. Hens lay best when the temperature is between 45 and 80°F (7 and 27°C). When the weather is much colder or much warmer, hens lay fewer eggs than usual. In warm weather, hens lay smaller eggs with thinner shells.

  All hens stop laying in winter, not because the weather is cold but because winter days have fewer hours than summer days. When the number of daylight hours falls below 14, hens stop laying. If your henhouse is wired for electricity, you can keep your hens laying year-round by installing a 60-watt lightbulb. Use the light in combination with daylight hours to provide at least 14 hours of light each day.

  Layers versus Lazy Hens

  You can improve your flock’s overall laying average by culling and slaughtering the lazy layers. The hens you cull can be used for stewing or making chicken soup. When your flock reaches peak production, at about 30 weeks of age, you can easily tell by looking at your hens and by handling them which ones are candidates for culling.

  The four-point examination of a good laying hen.

  • Look at their combs and wattles. Lazy layers have smaller combs and wattles than good layers.

  • Pick up each hen and look at her vent. A good layer has a large, moist vent. A lazy layer has a tight, dry vent.

  • Place your hand on the hen’s abdomen. It should feel round, soft, and pliable, not small and hard.

  • With your fingers, find the hen’s two pubic bones, which are located between her keel (breastbone) and her vent. In a good layer, you can easily press two or three fingers between the pubic bones and three fingers between the keel and the pubic bones. If the pubic bones are close and tight, the hen is not a good layer.

  The Bleaching Sequence

  If you raise a yellow-skinned breed, you can sort out the less productive hens by the color of their skin after they have been laying awhile. The same pigment that makes egg yolks yellow colors the skin of yellow-skinned breeds. When a hen starts laying, the skin of her various body parts bleaches out in a certain order. When she stops laying, the color returns in reverse order. You can therefore tell how long a yellow-skinned hen has been laying, or how long ago she stopped laying, by the color of the exposed skin on her beak and legs.

  Replacement Pullets

  A hen lays best during her first year. As she gets older, she lays fewer and fewer eggs. If you raise chickens primarily for eggs, you have the same concern as commercial producers — a time will come when the cost of feeding the hens is greater than the value of the eggs they lay. For this reason, commercial producers rarely keep hens more than two years.

  To keep those eggs rolling in, buy or hatch a batch of chicks every year or two. As soon as the replacement pullets start laying, get rid of the hens. If you replace your hens every year, you might sell your old flock, which will still lay fairly well for at least another year. If you replace your hens every two years or more, you can sell or use them yourself as stewing hens.

  Bleaching Sequence

  Add a batch of chicks every year or two to keep the flock producing eggs.

  Collecting and Storing Eggs

  An egg is at its best quality the moment it is laid, after which its quality gradually declines. Properly collecting and storing eggs slows that decline.

  Collect eggs often so they won’t get dirty or cracked. Pullets sometimes lay their first few eggs on the floor. A floor egg is usually soiled and sometimes gets trampled and cracked. Well-managed pullets soon figure out what the nests are for. If they continue laying on the floor, perhaps not enough nests are available for the number of pullets in the flock.

  Eggs also get dirty when a hen with soiled or muddy feet enters the nest. Eggs crack when two hens try to lay in the same nest or when a hen accidentally kicks an egg as she leaves the nest. The more often you collect eggs, the less chance they will get dirty or cracked.

  Further c
ollection keeps eggs from starting to spoil in warm weather and from freezing in cold weather. Try to collect eggs at least twice a day. Since most eggs are laid in the morning, around noon is a good time for your first collection.

  Discard eggs with dirty or cracked shells, which may contain harmful bacteria. If you are going to sell or hatch your eggs, sort out any that are larger or smaller than the rest or have weird shapes or wrinkled shells. You can keep the oddballs for your own culinary use. (And by the way, it’s normal to occasionally find an extremely small egg with no yolk or an extra-large egg with more than one yolk.)

  Store eggs in clean cartons, large end up so the yolk remains centered within the white. Where you store your eggs depends on whether they will be used for eating or hatching. If you plan to hatch them, store them in a cool, dry place, but not in the refrigerator. If you plan to eat them or sell them for eating, store them in the refrigerator as soon as possible after they are laid.

  Nutritional Value

  Eggs have been called the perfect food. One egg contains almost all the nutrients necessary for life. The only essential nutrient it lacks is vitamin C. Most of an egg’s fat, and all the cholesterol, is in the yolk. To reduce the cholesterol in an egg recipe, such as scrambled eggs or omelets, use two egg whites instead of one whole egg for half the eggs in the recipe. If the recipe calls for four eggs, for example, use two whole eggs plus four egg whites.

  To eliminate cholesterol in a recipe for cakes, cookies, or muffins, substitute two egg whites and 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil for each whole egg in the recipe. In a recipe calling for two eggs, for example, use two egg whites plus 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil. If the recipe already has oil in it, you may omit the extra 2 teaspoons.

  Egg Aging

  An egg stored at room temperature ages more in one day than an egg stored in the refrigerator ages in one week.

  The egg rack on a refrigerator door is not a good place to store eggs. Every time you open the refrigerator, eggs on the door get blasted with warm air. When you shut the door, the eggs get jarred. The best place to keep eggs is on the lowest shelf of the refrigerator, where the temperature is coldest. Raw eggs in a carton on the lowest shelf keep well for four weeks.

  Determining Freshness

  Sometimes you’ll find eggs in a place you haven’t looked before, so you can’t tell how long they’ve been there. One way to determine whether an egg is fresh is to put it in cold water. A fresh egg sinks, because it contains little air. As time goes by, moisture evaporates through the shell, creating an air space at the large end of the egg. The older the egg, the larger the air space will be. If the air space is big enough to make the egg float, the egg is too old to eat.

  Another way to tell if an egg is fresh is to use a light to examine the air space, the yolk, and the white. This examination is called candling, because it was once done by using candles. These days an electric light is used, but the process is still called candling. A good penlight is ideal for candling.

  Candle eggs in a dark room. Grasp each egg by its small end and hold it at a slant, large end against the light, so you can see its contents through the shell. In a fresh egg, the air space is no more than 1/8 inch deep. The yolk is a barely visible shadow that hardly moves when you give the egg a quick twist. In an old or stale egg, the air space is large and sometimes irregular in shape, and the yolk is a plainly visible shadow that moves freely when you give the egg a twist.

  Occasionally, you may see a small, dark spot near the yolk or floating in the white. This spot is a bit of blood or flesh that got into the egg while it was being formed. Even though blood spots and meat spots are harmless, when you sort eggs for hatching or for sale, eliminate those with spots. Customers don’t find them appetizing, and eggs with spots may hatch into pullets that lay eggs with spots.

  Gauging Egg Quality

  Photocopy this gauge, paste it onto a piece of cardboard, and use it as a guide when candling an egg to determine freshness. Remember: In a fresh egg, the air space is no more than 1/8 inch deep.

  How Fresh Is That Egg?

  old yolk flattens

  fresh yolk stands up

  If you aren’t sure what you are seeing when you candle an egg, break the egg into a dish and examine it. Soon you will be able to correlate what you see through the shell with what you see in the dish.

  When you break a fresh egg into a dish, the white is compact and firmly holds up the yolk. In an aging egg, the white is runny and the yolk flattens out. Try comparing one of your home-grown eggs with a store-bought egg — it’s easy to tell which is fresher.

  Eggs with spots may hatch into pullets that lay eggs with spots.

  Shell Color

  A hen’s eggs have a specific shell color. All her eggs might be white, light brown, dark brown, speckled, blue, or green. The color of the shell has nothing to do with the nutritional value of the contents.

  Hens of the Mediterranean breeds lay white-shelled eggs. Since Mediterraneans are the most efficient layers, they are preferred by commercial egg producers. Many consumers prefer eggs with white shells because that’s what they’re used to seeing.

  Brown-shelled eggs are laid by American breeds. Since the Americans are dual purpose, they’re popular in backyard flocks. Some consumers prefer brown eggs because they look homegrown. Brown eggs come in every shade from a dark reddish color to a light tan that appears almost pink.

  Blue-shelled eggs are laid by a South American breed called Araucana and its relative, the Ameraucana. Because the eggs are so pretty, these breeds are sometimes called “Easter-egg chickens.”

  Green-shelled eggs are laid by hens bred from a cross between Araucana and a brown-egg breed. Unscrupulous sellers charge outrageous prices for blue or green eggs by falsely claiming that they’re lower in cholesterol than white or brown eggs.

  Cooking with Fresh Eggs

  Hard-boiled eggs have many uses, ranging from picnic garnish to afternoon snack, from main dish at lunch to appetizer before dinner. Actually, the term hard-boiled is not accurate. True, the egg is cooked hard, but if it has been boiled, it will be rubbery and tough. A more accurate term is hard-cooked.

  Seven Ways to Preserve and Store Fresh Eggs

  How Many Eggs?

  Most recipes call for large eggs. If you’re using eggs of some other size, use the following chart to figure out how many you need:

  If you’ve never tried to peel a hard-cooked fresh egg, you’re in for a shock. The contents of a fresh egg fill up nearly the entire shell. When the egg is cooked through, it sticks to the shell. If you try to peel the egg, you’ll peel off several layers of white, too. The contents of an egg that’s least a week old have shrunk away from the shell, making it easier to peel. Store-bought eggs peel easily because they’re usually at least a week old by the time you get them home.

  Old eggs have an off-center yolk, which doesn’t look as nice as a centered yolk when the cooked egg is sliced or deviled. The fresher the egg, the more centered the yolk, but the more difficult the egg is to peel. A good compromise is to hard-cook eggs that are 7 to 10 days old. If you want to hard-cook fresher eggs, leave them overnight at room temperature first.

  Beating Egg Whites

  A gourmet cook beats egg whites only in a copper bowl. Copper from the bowl reacts with con-albumin in the white to stabilize the foam, so the air that’s beaten in will not leak right back out. You can get the same results in a glass or stainless-steel bowl by adding an acid ingredient.

  Cream of tartar is an acid ingredient. Add 1/8 teaspoon per egg white unless you’re making meringue, in which case add 1/8 teaspoon per two egg whites. Lemon juice or vinegar serves the same purpose as cream of tartar.

  Poultry Weights at Various Ages

  Egg whites beat up to their greatest volume if the eggs are first warmed to room temperature for about 30 minutes. Because fat inhibits beating, take great care not to get any yolk into the white when you separate the eggs. Properly beaten whites should increase to four ti
mes their volume.

  Butchering

  As butchering time draws near, seek out a fellow backyard chicken keeper willing to show you how to clean your broilers, or learn the procedure from a good book (see Resources, page 340). If you prefer not to butcher your own birds, perhaps you can find a custom slaughterer in your area who handles chickens.

  How to Cut Up a Chicken

  To cut up a chicken, use a sharp, heavy knife and follow these steps:

  1. Cut skin between thighs and body.

  2. Grasp one leg in each hand, lift the bird, and bend back the legs until the hip joints pop free.

  3. Cut away the leg by slicing from the hip, as close as possible to the backbone.

  4. If you wish, separate the thigh from the drumstick by cutting through the joint between them. You can find the joint by flexing the leg and thigh to locate the bending point.

  5. On the same side, remove the wing by cutting along the joint inside the “wing pit,” over the joint and down around it. Turn the bird over and remove the other leg and wing. To create mini drumsticks, separate the upper, meatier portion of each wing from the lower two bony sections.

  6. To divide the body, stand the bird on its neck and cut from the tail toward the neck, along the end of the ribs on one side. Cut along the other side to free the back. Bend the back until it snaps in half; cut along the line of least resistance to separate the ribs from the lower back.

  7. Place breast on the cutting board, skin-side down, and cut through the white cartilage at the V of the neck

  8. Grasp the breast firmly in both hands and bend back each side, pushing with your fingers to snap the breastbone. Cut the breast in half lengthwise along the bone. For boned breasts, place the breast skin-side up on a cutting board. Insert the knife along one side of the bone, and cut the meat away from the bone. Repeat for the other side.