All About Silkies, Nigerian Dwarf Goats & More
Can you freeze eggs? You might be asking yourself this if you have backyard chickens who are laying more eggs than you can eat. Or, if you have found a banging sale on eggs and you know that building a stockpile is one way to save boatloads of money.
You can freeze LOTS of different foods to help preserve them for later use. Some examples are: freezing sweet potatoes, freezing mashed potatoes, freezing peppers and freezing milk.
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If you are are looking into getting chickens for eggs, one question you may wonder about is “do roosters lay eggs?”
To answer the question do roosters lay eggs, first you need to understand basic chicken terminology. (And maybe also understand a little basic biology.) If you don’t already know, a rooster is a mature male chicken.
Of course, the short (and probably obvious answer) to this question is no. No, roosters do not lay eggs. Males of most species do not lay eggs, and roosters are not an exception to this.
Ok, so that seems pretty simple, right? But, if you were wondering do roosters lay eggs – that may have also made you wonder:
This perhaps, isn’t quite a simple as the fact that males do not lay eggs. But, the answer is still the same. Do chickens need a rooster to lay eggs? No, they do not.
However, if you want to hatch your own chicks either by incubating eggs or using a broody hen then you WILL need a rooster. While the answer to can chickens lay eggs without a rooster is yes, they can. The eggs that hens lay without a rooster are unfertilized.
In order to hatch and raise baby chicks from your flock, you will need fertilized eggs. And, you can only get fertilized eggs if you have a rooster (or roosters) with your hens. So, if you want to get chicks, then you will need a rooster.
First, roosters tend to be much more colorful and flashy than hens. So, if you want really striking looking birds in your flock, you may want to add a rooster or two.
Also, as mentioned above, while chickens can lay eggs without roosters, in order to get fertilized eggs you need a rooster. So, if you want to hatch your own chicks, you will also want a rooster.
Additionally, roosters are good flock protectors. They will help ward off potential predators. We actually had one of our boys defend his girls against a predator one night – he was almost killed, but he kept all of his girls safe and we were able to nurse him back to health.
So, even though the answer to the question – do roosters lay eggs – is no. There are several reasons you may still want to consider adding a rooster to your flock.
There are so many chicken breeds in the world, that it should come as no real surprise that there are chickens that lay green eggs.
Afterall, there are other colored egg layers, frizzle chickens, bantam chickens and all sorts of other fun types of chickens. So, getting green chicken eggs is not too much of a stretch.
We have all kinds of different breeds in our layer flock, and when we started getting our flock together, we intentionally added in some chickens that lay green eggs. We wanted to get all the different possible egg colors from our chickens.
If you have read about how chickens make blue eggs, you may have a bit of an idea as to how green chicken eggs may come about. All eggs start out white in color.
The egg color differences then come about by pigment being added to the shell during the time that the egg passes through the chickens oviduct. When and what kind of pigment is added determines the ultimate color of the egg. (source)
Most chickens that lay green eggs have a blue egg base that then gets a brown egg tint put over top at the end of the egg formation process. (source) This results in green chicken eggs!
Isbar’s may be the one purebred chicken that lays green eggs. They were developed in Sweden and lay varying colors of green eggs, sometimes with brown spots. Isbar’s are considered a rare breed.
Another interesting fact about Isbars is that they are autosexing – this means that you can tell the sex of the chicks at hatch.
Easter Eggers, while commonly referred to as a breed are not a purebred chicken. They are simply a cross of a blue egg layer with a brown egg layer.
Easter Eggers are above average year round layers of medium sized green eggs.
Favaucana’s are one of the types of chickens that lay green eggs which is also technically an Easter Egger. You can make your own Favaucana’s by breeding faverolles and Ameraucanas. Or, you can order them at some hatcheries like MyPetChicken.
Technically speaking an olive egger is a type of Easter Egger. Olive eggers are, as you can probably guess by their name one of the chickens that lays green eggs which are a dark olive green in color.
Olive Eggers are a cross of a chicken that lays blue eggs with a chicken that lays a dark brown egg. The blue egg has the brown tint added on making the egg appear olive green. To get darker olive colored eggs, simply mix in chickens that lay darker chocolate colored eggs.
The main reason to get chickens that lay green eggs is just to add a little fun and color to your egg basket. Also, if you are trying to make money raising chickens colored egg layers are always a popular choice for chicks to sell.
Another cool thing to having chickens that lay green (or other colored) eggs in your flock is it can help you tell which chickens are and are not laying.
Green chicken eggs are obviously different than other eggs in color. That’s the whole point, right? But in terms of taste, nutrition and all of the actual egg components, no, green eggs are no different than other eggs.
If you have your own chicken flock, or maybe you’re just starting to raise baby chicks, you may start asking yourself “how long do chickens live?” Afterall, you will want to be prepared for how long you will have your chickens, right?
When we started thinking about getting chickens, one of the first questions that we asked was that of “how long do chickens live”. We wanted to know how long we might have our first chickens as well as how often we may need to replenish our layer flock.
First, let’s just talk the simple, easy answer. In general, it is accepted that the life cycle of a chicken is an average of 8 year.
So, that’s all right – 8 years is the answer to the question how long do chickens live.
Not, so fast.
First, although the life cycle of a chicken may average 8 years – that is just how long can that chicken live in general. Most chickens these days, especially ones in backyard flocks probably live much shorter lives.
Why?
Well, predators are a really big issue for chickens. I can’t tell you how many times we get messages from people who have purchased silkies or pullets asking if we have more available because something got their birds.
So, predator issues can most certainly bring the average down when answering how long do chickens live.
Another factor in how long the life cycle of a chicken will be is their care. There are a lot of people jumping into backyard chickens. Which is great – they can experience fresh eggs (which are SO good), as well as have some adorable pets.
However, most backyard flock enthusiasts aren’t going to run their chickens to the vet (like they might their dog) if they get sick. And the fact is, chickens can be fragile at time. Baby chicks need certain care. Adult chickens can get all sorts of things like Marek’s or respiratory diseases – sometimes simply from wild birds flying through.
That’s not to say that raising chickens is SUPER hard, it really isn’t that bad 😉 However, when issues do arise, the likelihood that chickens are getting top notch medical care is just not realistic.
So, clearly, health and medical care will play a large role in the answer to the question how long do chickens live.
Yes! Chicken breed definitely can play a large role in how long a chicken will live.
For example, just out of purpose, most meat breeds are not going to live very long. Not only are they butchered young, but most are bred to grow big, fast. This fast growth often times can cause significant health issues if they are alive much after butchering age.
Also, there are production breeds, like sex link and leghorns. These breeds, sort of like meat breeds, are bred to have large eggs and to produce like gangbusters quickly. This means they start laying early and lay super often (5 – 7 times a week usually).
This constant egg laying can ultimately take a toll on their overall health and potentially cause health issues. Which can cause them to have a shorter life span.
As you can see, the answer to how long chickens live really can vary. Of course, we can answer that question by looking at the average life cycle of a chicken.
That answer, as we have reviewed, is about 8 years.
However, that answer is not really the end all, be all as there are a lot of other factors that will be at play. Particularly, breed, medical care, health and potential predators.
In our flock, we do have a few girls who have reached the 6 year age range now and still seem to be clucking along just fine 🙂 However, unfortunately, it is more common to loose some chickens earlier in life due to predators and other issues.
If you have decided to start with backyard chickens, you are probably trying to learn all that you can about your new animals! Most people keep chickens for eggs, so you might be wondering – how long do chickens lay eggs?
When we got our first chickens, we did research on the different chicken breeds and we learned what to look for when our chickens would start to lay. However, at the start of our chicken keeping adventure, we did not ask how many eggs does a chicken lay.
You may also wonder do roosters lay eggs?
After having our chickens for a little while, one Spring we found that we had much less in the way of eggs than we had in previous years. We knew how often chickens typically lay eggs and we just weren’t getting that many.
Hmm, we started to wonder why we had a decrease in egg production.
As we started to go through the list of decreases, we realized that it was not a matter of health or environmental components. Rather, it was the pure age of our layers.
When looking to find out the answer to how long do chickens lay eggs, the real question is how many eggs does a chicken lay. You see, chickens are born (or hatched) with a set number of eggs.
This means that a chicken can only lay up to the amount they they are hatched with. Many times other factors – health, predators etc – prevent them from laying all of their eggs.
Good egg production chickens will lay between 200 and 300 eggs for their first two years. After their first two years they will start to drastically decrease the amount of eggs that they lay.
A chicken doesn’t just stop laying eggs, but there are signs to look for to see if your hen has either stopped production or is close to stopping production. So, once your hen hits the two year mark she may still lay some, but it will not be as steady as her prime years.
No, there is not absolutely precise answer to the question of how long do chickens lay eggs. You can make the assumption that after age two, egg production is likely to dramatically decrease.
Figuring out how long your chickens will lay eggs, you should also take into account the breed. Breeds that are mass producers tend to lay much heavier in the beginning of their lives and therefore have much more dramatic slow downs as they get older.
Breeds that are a more moderate producer may continue to be a low to moderate producer a bit after the two year mark because they have not completely depleted their egg reserve in the first two years. They will definitely slow down their laying at two years though.
One of the variables that effects the average numbers when talking about the question of how long do chickens lay eggs is that most commercial egg producers cull their layers around age 2. As we have discussed, there is a production drop off at that age and for commercial producers that makes it not economical to keep those hens around.
In terms of backyard chickens, many backyard chicken keepers will keep hens around whether or not they are pumping out the eggs. Also, backyard chicken keepers sometimes have heavy producing breeds like sex links and leghorns, but often times have dual purpose breeds and other more moderate producers.
As we discussed above, these more moderate producers will produce longer since they are not laying all their eggs by age two. We have some older girls in our layer flock – aged about 5 – who still give us an occasional egg.
So, exactly how long do chickens lay eggs? They lay really well from point of lay until around age 2. But moderate layers can continue to produce decently until older ages 4 or 5.
Make sure to take these facts into account when deciding which chicken breeds you want to get. Do you want mass producers that will dry up around age 2? If so, will you cull them and get new birds then?
Do you want moderate producers that may lay less eggs overall, but will lay longer and will lessen the need to cull and replace as often?
Frizzle Chicken. The very first time I heard this bit of chicken terminology, I thought what the heck is a frizzle chicken??
To explain what a frizzled chicken is in a simple way, they are a curly feathered chicken. A frizzle itself is not a specific chicken breed though.
There are several breeds that can be a frizzle chicken. Frizzle cochin, polish frizzle chicken and frizzle silkie (also known as a sizzle) are just a few examples.
So, if a frizzle is not a specific breed, what exactly causes a chicken to be a frizzle? A frizzle is a chicken which does not have “standard” or “normal” feathers. Instead of it’s feathers laying flat, they curl up and out from their body.
This frizzling, so to speak, is caused by an incomplete dominate gene. This means that a chicken only needs to carry one copy of the frizzle gene in order to show frizzling.
Some birds will show more frizzling than others. This is due to the fact that the frizzle gene also has a modifying factor to the gene which can control the extent to which their feathers will appear frizzled (source).
A frizzle chicken will tend to have most of the same characteristics of the actual breed that it is. For example a frizzle silkie will tend to have the same black skin, 5 toes and friendly personality of a typical silkie chicken.
The main difference or defining characteristic of a frizzle chicken is, of course, its curly or frizzled feathers.
Many chicken breeds already have a frizzle version of their breed. As already mentioned, some of the most common frizzle chicken breeds are: Frizzle cochin, Polish frizzle chicken and frizzle silkie.
Cochin and Polish come in frizzle standard and frizzle bantam. Silkies are a bantam breed and do not have a standard size in general. Bantam breeds are basically “mini” size chickens.
Taking care of a frizzled chicken is pretty similar to taking care of a “regular” chicken. However, there are some important points to consider.
Due to the fact that they do not have “normal” feathers, it can make them a little different to care for.
First, due to being a frizzle, they cannot really fly. Their feathers are not made the same and therefore, do not have the same characteristics allowing them flight. This means that they may need a shorter perch. Also, they may not be as well equipped to get away from predators – so they may do better in a predator proof run than being free ranged.
Second, since their feathers are curled and not “standard”, they do not have quite the same insulation as normal feathered chickens. We have frizzled chickens in our flocks here in Virginia and they seem to do just fine in the cold and snow of winter.
However, we do make sure that they have a very cozy, draft free chicken coop with lots of buddies to pile up with and stay warm. Our frizzles (like our silkies) will tend to all pile up together for warmth, especially when it is cold out.
Breeding frizzle chickens is really quite fun. They are such a unique looking chicken with their curly feathers.
When you breed frizzled chickens, you never want to breed two frizzle chickens together. The result of breeding frizzle to frizzle can result in a double frizzle chicken – meaning they have two copies of the frizzling gene. We call these frazzles.
Frazzles do not often live very long or healthy lives. Having two copies of the frizzle gene makes their curled feathers very brittle. They tend to break off. They are often times bald in places. And their overall health tends to suffer.
Due to this, we recommend setting up breeding pens where you either have a frizzle rooster over normal/standard feather hens. Or, you can set up your breeding pens to have a normal/standard feather rooster over frizzled hens.
If you breed Frizzle to Normal/standard it will result in 50% frizzled and 50% normal/standard feathered chicks.
Whereas, if you breed Frizzle to Frizzle will result in 50% frizzle, 25% normal/standard, 25% frazzled feathered chicks.
When frizzle chicks hatch, you cannot really tell that they have a different feather type. It is not until they are a few weeks old and have started blowing their chick fluff that you will start to see if they have feathers that have a curl.
If you are looking for a frizzle chicken, a few of our silkie colors have the potential to have frizzled feathers. Our mottled, crele and silver patterned pens all have the chance at having frizzled chicks.
Overall, if you are looking for a fun, unique addition to your flock, adding a frizzle chicken is a good choice. Most frizzled chickens make great pets as most of the frizzle chicken breeds are also friendly.
