dantheman said:
are these your first??- a friend of mine used to have about ten hens while i was at school, its amazing how much better the eggs tasted than even the "best" bought ones...- and you get so many double yolkers!- because theyre usually taken out at farms because theyre too big to fit in the boxes, nowadays, another friend gets given these "too big" ones free from a free range farm for exactly that reason!- amazing because theyre the best ones in my opinion..
These are my first hens. And yes, the eggs really do taste much better than any shop bought ones (and I only ever buy organic free-range ones in a shop due to the higher welfare standards) as shop bought are already a week old by the time they get to the shop. The difference between a shop bought egg and one laid that day is *amazing* and I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd tasted it for myself.
The texture of a really fresh egg is wonderful - very silky and the flavour is much richer. The home produced eggs make wonderful poached eggs as the white stays so much closer to the yolk. But if you want a *hard-boiled* egg, don't use a properly fresh one as they are a b*gg*r to peel the shell from - the white stays attached and is layered. For a decent hard-boiled egg the egg need to be older, when the white has 'thinned' and doesn't come away still attached to the shell. But if you want a really tasty soft-boiled egg to have with your bread & butter soldiers, the really fresh egg from your own laydeez is the way to go.
I haven't had any double-yolkers yet, but the girls are giving me about 5-6 eggs a week each, which is not bad going for a hen that's supposed to be 'egged out' and it makes you wonder just what they have to produce to be considered commercially viable.
Saying that, whichever farmer my two came from, he/she is okay, as only Cathode was debeaked and then only the tiniest amount. Some hens are horribly mutilated by debeaking and this wasn't the case with the bunch of hens my two came from. Plus the farmer let the BHWT rescue some of the lot that were due to go off for slaughter, so that's another plus - the fact he/she is working with the BHWT.