Duck Eggs are Here + Our Chicken Flock is Expanding!

We're going to start putting duck eggs out for sale as of later today, Friday September 5th. Duck eggs are $7/dozen. They eat about ~25% more food than the chickens do and require more upkeep which is why they cost more. They're still increasing in size but they are well on their way to being XL. Right now it takes 2 to 3 days to make a dozen as only 8/13 girls are laying and we don't give people small ones, odd ones etc.

We didn't have much luck with breeding chickens this year, so we have an order for chicks coming in mid-October. More Rhode Island Reds and some Barred Plymouth Rocks to form the foundation of our flock as the existing one is aging. The new girls will bring us to capacity at ~75 girls (currently just below 40) until we start making choices in the spring about which older girls to move along to stewpot homes and will have to top up with a few more chicks in the spring. The earliest we would expect to see eggs from the October hatching girls is mid to late February for the production line RIRs. They might be producing usable eggs in time for the Easter rush but don't expect a big winter supply bump unfortunately.

As for winter season and molting, we've already seen a bit of a dip in egg production. We've got some solar lights extending the day length a couple of hours and that seems to be helping us keep eggs currently between 18-22 a day, that number may go down further as we enter actual winter.