Our chickens have started laying.
Over the last couple of days, they’ve given us four little eggs. They’re quite small – between 43 to 49 grams (yes, I weighed them), which is hardly surprising, since our girls are still very young.
Here’s one of them next to the standard 59g egg that we buy from the markets…
As I’m now chicken obsessed, I have, of course, been researching eggs. I was interested to learn that there are two layers of albumin – a thick inner layer and a thinner outer one. As the egg ages, the thick layer becomes watery and indistinguishable from the thin layer.
Our little eggs are so fresh that the thick albumin hasn’t started to break down at all. This one was laid the day the photo was taken…
It made the most delicious poached egg. Pete thinks the lovely golden yolk is a product of all the dandelions he’s been feeding the hens!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Beautiful eggs, and the color of that yolk is amazing!
Poached eggs, fried eggs, I love them all, but I do think poaching brings the best, most pure flavor
Enjoy them!
I hadn’t ever thought about it, really, but I think that fresh laid eggs are really perfect for poached eggs with their extra thick layer of albumin. I’m using the freshest eggs for poached from now on! Thanks for the lesson!
Oddly, my sister-in-law who grew up on a farm with chickens running loose now hates dark yolk eggs and would never buy them, even though she and my brother eat very healthily. Lighter the better as far as she is concerned! Me? I like ’em like yours.
Cheers, susan
It’s 4.30am here, why on earth I’m awake, no-one knows!! And here you make me hungry again girlfriend!! Looks delicious!! Have a wonderful weekend ~ Amanda
What a glorious colour. They should give your cakes a good colour, if you get enough to bake with.
glorious indeed! it just stands up in the pan when it’s that fresh! i got a little crazy, too, when we got eggs from the small farm where we picked strawberries. the yolk was almost orange and the white tight around it. i’ve read it’s the protein that gives the hue, together with the caroten that’s in certain plants. i have no clue if there’s any of that in dandelions :)
congrats & enjoy!
I love fresh eggs! I used to live by a duck pond, and my brother and I would go hunting for duck eggs several times a week. I would keep chickens if I didn’t live in NYC.
Thank you all! Interestingly, the yolks on our eggs are more of a golden yellow – the ones we buy are much darker. I’m not sure what it all means, but ours are delicious! (Ok, I might be biased.. :)).
They do look amazing Celia – you must be so pleased that the girls have started laying!
Lucky you with those delicious fresh eggs!
C, personally I think it was the leftover pizza that finally did the trick! :)
Debra, thank you, we are feeling very blessed! :)
How exciting! I can imagine I’d be out there every few hours to see if there were any more:)
A good friend has kept chickens for several years now and it seems that the yolk gets more colour depending on what you feed them (although I don’t think it changes their nutritional value).
I remember when I was given some pullet eggs by same friend and used them peeled and cut in half semi-hard boiled on top of a salad – they looked very sophisticated (like a pigeon egg I guess).
I wish I lived round the corner from you Celia.
I’d have scrambled eggs for breakfast, plenty of butter on the bread.
& strong black coffee.
& I’d be making a frisee salad tonight with a wobbly, almost clear white poached egg on top.
Well done those young chickens!
Is the shell thicker than the shell of shop bought eggs? I bought organic eggs at the market direct from the producer and I had trouble cracking them!
Sarah, or a quail’s egg, perhaps? The little eggs are very cute – the boys ate the other three this morning for breakfast…scrambled!
Gill, you would be more than welcome, and hopefully you’d arrive with a loaf of sourdough on the back of your bike.. :)
Anna, the shell is thicker, but I think that’s because we’ve given them a small bowl of grit to peck at if they choose. The FR eggs we buy at the markets always have quite thin shells – not sure what that means…
Congratulations Celia! What an awesome moment when they start laying eggs. And yes you can definitely see how fresh they are from the albumen and how gloriously golden the yolks are!
I suspect some kind of colouring is involved with nice dark coloured commercial eggs (except the organic ones I buy, I hope!) Just wondering what colour the yolks would go if you gave the biddies a feed of left over beetroot!
Ah, I poached day before yesterday and the eggs didn’t behave at all well, so now I know why :) In fact we had a conversation about why sometimes the white sets neatly round the yolk and other times not, it’s all a bit wild in the swirly water of the saucepan, do you poach free form or in a little holder wotsit….
Well done the girls, btw I am going to hitch a ride on Gill’s parcel carrier…..
The eggs look lovely…soon you will not want to ever eat a store bought egg again! I think your girls are a very happy lot!
The fruits of labour…….on the table. I love runny yolks with a pinch of salt! Congratulations.
Thank you all!
Jo, I poached freeform – swirling the salted boiling water and dropping the room temperature egg in, then putting the lid on and leaving it for a few minutes. I’ve found that these fresh eggs cook much faster than older ones – Pete suggested it’s because their protein chains haven’t broken down yet. Which may be why some recipes such as macarons always specify using old egg whites.
Cindy, I already don’t want to buy eggs ever again! Not sure how feasible that will be though.. :)
now how great can that be to have fresh eggs …..you can see how fresh it is the way the white stands up…..I am so envious!!! growing up we would drive a few miles to a farm for fresh eggs….you just can’t find them around here…..fresh here is only two weeks old….lol
thanks for sharing!
Chef, I know, we’re so fortunate! The girls are laying right now, and it’s taking all my willpower to not go out and badger them to lay faster! Thanks for stopping by.. :)
Fantastically glorious, Celia! It’s funny, but I never noticed how shop bought eggs were runny in the whites until we started keeping our own chickens and observed how plump the eggs are when fresh. Just beautiful!!
Re. the hard shelled eggs…I have used some guinnea fowl eggs in the past and they are ridiculously hard to crack…it’s almost comical. :o)
Stunning looking eggs, dear Celia!!
Thanks for the info on eggs too! Very interesting too!
You are so fortunate to have your own hens & your own eggs!! There is nothing better then that!
Christine, Sophie, we’re now getting 2 to 3 eggs every day! If this keeps up, we’ll have eggs to share.. :)
These eggs would be amazing! Great job!
Never, never hard boil fresh eggs. The membrane is too attatched to the white and when you try to peel off the shell you lose most of the whites.
Once in mid winter, one of my chickens laid a shell-less egg! They had been too cold and miserable to go out of their cage and the shell grit hadn’t been touched for a while, I guess it didn’t seem appetising at minus temps! We changed their feed and sent them out to play in the cold and they soon got back to normal.
Good luck with your chickies!
Ooops, it makes much more sense to explain that the egg was perfectly formed and just held together by the membrane. Apart from having no shell, it was perfectly formed. I guess the chicken thought it was her lucky day!
Maria, thank you, although I’m not doing anything…hehe
Chef, thank you for that advice! I will definitely not boil them for very long. Apparently the shell-less eggs aren’t uncommon (as I said, I’ve been reading up about eggs!) – has she ever laid another one though? We’ve just given our chickens new laying boxes – raised off the ground – and they seem much happier with those…
I’m so excited for you Celia! I had been wondering how the girls were coping with this cold, damp weather. Fresh scrambled eggs on sourdough for breakie…mmmm
Rob, that’s exactly what I had for breakfast this morning! :)