The eggs are home

Last Thursday, Trevor and I drove up to Weare, New Hampshire (about a 45 minute drive if you don't stop for Dunkin' Donuts along the way) to get some fertilized eggs.

I met with Sarah who runs a local egg business with her younger sister. Through a grant from Youth Venture and the 4H these clever chicks have started a small business that:

• Sells eggs for eating,
• Sells fertilized eggs for hatching, and
• Rents incubators for those who are brave enough to try and hatch eggs

This is their second year in business and they currently have 20 hens and 1 rooster (His name is Rocky Road and we'll get to him). You can check out their blog Two Spring Chicks here.

Recently, a fisher cat took out most of their birds and so they are not only rebuilding some outdoor fencing but they are rebuilding their flock. And that means chicks. On site were a batch hatched from incubator eggs they produced this spring.

Sarah's favorite is named Lilac by her younger sister. Photos don't do these birds justice. They are primarily egg-producing Ameraucanas, which means they sport feathers of many colors. Ameraucanas are essentially hardy mutts, in the chicken world, laying eggs that are different tones of blue. On the farm they also have some ISAs that lay the brown eggs. The rooster (Rocky Road) is just gorgeous with a cream and brown specked chest and sporting a beautiful iridescent tail. Rocky is a looker. As you can imagine, any offspring from this guy tend to be colorful and distinguished looking.

The rest of the flock varies from red, cream, grey, black and brown.  The goal of their business, Sarah told me, was to have happy hens, and very happy they appeared.

"Do you name your hens?" She asked me and at that point I knew I had found a soul sister.

There are a few things about Sarah's business that make it outstanding.

• They will rent you incubators until you get a hatch. That means if you incubate a set of eggs and you don't get any, you get to incubate another set and keep going until you do. The rental charge does not change. They currently have 6 incubators in house and are very popular with the home-school crowd.
• They will take back any and all chicks that have hatched from their eggs. We only want about 3 or 4 birds (and definitely no roosters) but you never know what you are going to get. We might get 11 chicks we might get significantly less. As the truism states, we won't be able to count them until they hatch.
• They take back all roosters – I can't tell you what a relief this is. Having gone through the neighborhood trauma (and hell) of (inadvertently) having roosters, it is a tremendous relief to know that I don't have to run ads finding a home for our male birds.

Now here's the disclaimer on that. The roosters that are returned are often donated to local food shelters. There is a person in town who processes them for the kitchens. While I don't like the thought of killing anything we know, I do understand that people eat meat (heck, I eat meat) and if the birds have to go somewhere, this seems like an elegant solution.

Sarah presented us with a carton of 8 eggs that had been kept cool inside the house. When asked how she knew the eggs were fertilized she said that they knew because they had tested a few to make sure.

How does one test an egg to see if the rooster is doing what he's supposed to be doing?

The only way is to crack the egg open. If there is a tiny white disc inside that's hollow in the middle the egg has been fertilized (fertilized eggs are safe to eat). If one is fertilized you can assume that the others are as well. Although we had ordered 8 eggs, because they were willing to take back any extra birds, I said that we'd be willing to take more if any were available. Sarah walked over to a nest, grabbed three eggs from it and put them in our carton.

Talk about fresh!

Trevor and I thanked Sarah for taking the time to show us her farm.

We carefully put the eggs in the car and like the parents of a newborn, held our breath and checked on them every time we passed over a bump sending thanks when we all arrived home safe and sound.

 Read more about the eggs and our flock at Simple Thrift.