We finally have chickens - but no eggs yet

Having to buy eggs is a new thing for me. If we didn't have any eggs of our own, we always knew someone who had some to share. As well as being expensive, they don't look or taste the same as home grown. And who knows how old they are, as fresh eggs actually keep for a long time in storage. A great indication is with boiled eggs. Peeling bought eggs is easy, but when you boil a fresh egg, the shell sticks to the egg and peels into a big mess, it doesn't seem to peel cleanly until it is older than a week.

After looking around for chickens we came up empty. There seems to be no chicken farm around here. Usually I try to rescue (i could get them only a year old for about $2-$5 ea) some from cage or barn laying and set them free at our place. I love to watch as they regrow their feathers, learn how to scratch around and catch their own food and get fat and happy.

That wasn't about to happen here. The only thing we could come up with here was a farm that bred chickens, as a hobby, for selling. On the plus side they are very young and will last longer and they are young enough to be friendly, but, on the down side, they were $12 ea and they weren't even laying yet. It will take a couple of months for that to happen.

We were able to pick some pretty ones, we got 6 hens and a rooster. Still have to buy eggs for a while yet.