Have you ever heard of a "Pigken"

It is a long story, but needless to say the mother and veterinarian in me took over and I bottle raised two of the piglets from Hamlet's first litter.  Sarah Katherine took the liberty of naming them "Shaggy and Scooby". (She watches a lot of classic cartoons with her daddy)

Well, Shaggy doesn't know that she is a pig!  She follows us around where ever we go on the farm. If we are gone, then she takes right up with the chickens. Most mornings you would find her asleep on our front door step with the dog and occasionally a rooster, but now she eats with the chickens, drinks with the chickens, and sleeps with the chickens.

Here she is drinking out of their waterer and belly up to the chicken feeder with the rest of the chickens.  Yesterday, I found her asleep in the middle of about 5 chickens!

 At night, she climbs right up into the "egg mobile" and sleeps with the chickens.  I will be really amazed if she starts laying eggs!

Eggs, Eggs, and More Eggs

We had battled hawks that were eating our chickens.  Then, the "blizzard of 2011" slowed our egg production down to a couple of eggs a day.....we now have 13 dozen eggs every 6 days!  These are some working girls!

We wash the eggs daily and package them into recycled containers. If you would like some eggs then Click Here 

It is so great to go out to our eggmobile and see the nesting boxes full of eggs!  I do feel like Bubba Gump since we are having scrambled eggs, omelettes, eggs benedict, eggs over easy, eggs sunny side up...you get the point.  A reminder that we are still taking recipes for our Best Egg Recipe Contest that ends this month.  We will post our favorites on our blog and our Grand Champion Recipe will

Organic advocates ask USDA to make egg farmers give hens time in pasture, not just enclosures

A lot of leeway is given to the definition of free-range and pastured poultry.  One interpretation is that if a bird has access to the outdoors they can be labeled as free-range, or pastured.  Even though the outdoors may be a fenced enclosure on concrete.  Here is a link to the article:

Organic advocates ask USDA to make egg farmers give hens more time in pastures.

This is still better than this.

But still not as good as this.

This is why it is so important to research and know where your food comes from.  I used to feel good about purchasing chicken that was free-range only to find our later that they were raised in the same commercial chicken houses with a concrete yard to wander into.

All of our chickens are raised outdoors and go into coops at night.   Our chickens have the option to go anywhere they want to and express their true chickeness.  Don't really know if that's a word, but it should be.  They return to their coop at night and we close the door to protect them from predators.  The next morning we go back out and let them out.  Do they look happier?  Yes.  For most chickens this is as good as it gets...unless you're a mascot.