Ingredients for simple baked custard for 12 desserts.

People with hens have to be creative to use all the eggs that their hens produce in the spring. This late winter and spring, I actually had an excess of eggs. And that was when only three hens were laying. While I love giving eggs to people who really appreciate the goodness of fresh eggs, I usually end up giving away the best of the best. Ones that are jumbo and don’t have blemishes. I end up with seconds. Doesn’t make sense. With only three hens, I’ll make an effort to use the eggs myself.

We use our eggs in all kinds of ways. We like egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, huevos rancheros, quiche, omelets, poached eggs, and eggs Florentine. I’m going to make a soufflé as soon as I get up the nerve.

Since we needed some comfort food after loosing Tulip, I went back to an old egg recipe for a dessert that turned out to be a hit at a recent potluck: baked custard. People my age have fond memories of Mom (the depression era kind) serving egg custard for dessert. Smooth, creamy, rich, topped with a mound of whipped cream, takes you back to a simpler time, before Ben and Jerry’s and chocolate mousse. This easy-to-make recipe is the basic kind. I didn’t get it off the internet (those were all altered with flavors and additions). This was out my old Better Homes and Garden “New Cookbook”. You remember, the one with the red plaid cover. Anyway, I tripled the recipe for the potluck but the one below is fine for 4 people. Double for 6-8 servings, and enjoy. Beware, some people may want seconds.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups whole milk
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Ground nutmeg (optional)

Directions:

Baked custard for 8.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat eggs. Stir in milk, vanilla, and salt. Place one-1 quart casserole or six 6-ounce custard cups in a 13x9x2 inch baking pan on an oven rack. Pour custard mixture among the custard cups. Sprinkle with nutmeg.

Pour boiling water into the pan around the casserole or custard cups to a depth of 1 inch. Bake at 325º until firm and a knife, inserted near center comes out clean. Serve warm or chilled.

To unmold chilled individual custard, first loosen edges with a spatula or knife; slip point of knife down sides to let air in. Invert onto a serving plate. Top with whipped cream if you wish.

Happy Mothers Day to those of you who have mothered and will always mother, and who understand the maternal instincts that are so apparent in hens. It is really so touching.

I took this picture off the internet last year. I’d love to give credit to whoever took it and a hearty thanks for the chuckle it gives me each time I look at it. Many thanks.

It doesn't matter what you mother, just mother. The world will be a better place.

Queen Tulip 2009-2012

Tulip, the Ameraucana, also called an Easter Egger because she lays green eggs, has been sick for six months now and passed away yesterday afternoon. She had what is called egg yolk peritonitis, also called “internal laying”. It is something that backyard hen owners struggle with because our hens provide us with eggs but are also our pets and live longer than commercial egg producers so are susceptible to organ malfunction.

Egg peritonitis is the result of an egg yolk initially moving into the abdomen rather than being “captured” by the fimbrae at the top of the oviduct. In a normal egg cycle, the ovary releases a single ovum (yolk) which is picked up by the fimbrae at the top of the oviduct. Birds have only one oviduct. The egg passes down through the oviduct picking up albumin (egg white), the egg membrane, and then the egg shell, before being passed out through the cloaca. The cloaca also has the ureters from the kidneys and the rectum passing urine and feces through the same exit point.

We knew Tulip had problems when she began laying those huge rubber eggs (shell-less eggs) several months ago. She was treated with antibiotics but showed no improvement. Oh, it was hard to watch.

Husband Don and I made a “no vet” agreement when I got the chicks but I broke down and made an appointment to see one. We never got there. Because prognosis for this disease in chickens is poor, I pretty much knew that Tulip would be euthanized. There was the possibility that the vet might suggest major surgery to remove her “egg maker” but I don’t think I would have agreed to that.

Yesterday, she stayed inside the little coop until late morning, then joined the others who were scratching around in the garden. She stretched out on her side, absorbing the sun. When I locked the other hens back in the run, I put Tulip in a little crate in the garden shed with food and water. She lay down, and never got up. By nightfall, she was dead.

We buried Tulip near Rosie who passed away two winters ago. She is no longer in pain but Husband Don and I are sad. I didn’t sleep well last night. Our original flock of six is down to three. Three really wonderful hens that are now over three years old. There will be decisions to make but I’m not in the mood to make them. Loving and caring for animals is both joyful and heartbreaking. I’m experiencing the latter now.

Sweetpeas nails have grown too long.

Our hens needed a manicure. We have to clip the nails of our two labradoodles nearly every month. But with our hens, once a year does it. Living in the wild, chickens wear down their nails scratching in coarse dirt and even rocky soil. But our pampered hens scratch around in a run where most rocks have been removed and the soil is raked once a month to keep it clean.

The hens all needed to have their nails clipped this spring. We’ve only done this twice in their three years and it always makes me a bit nervous. Just like the dogs, if you cut a nail too short it bleeds. I took the nail clippers and some styptic powder (a blood stopper for dogs, cats, and birds) out to the coop and picked up Sweetpea who seemed to have the longest nails. Her nails were so long her toes were turning to the side.

I’m not very brave about clipping the nails of animals. I’m afraid of hurting them. Taking one toe at a time, while Don held the hens on his lap, we cut about 1/4″ off the ends of the nails on each hen. I did make one of Sweetpea’s bleed but it stopped with a little powder pressed on the blunt end of the nail and she forgave me. Sweetpea and the others were out scratching around in a few minutes.

Clip only the dark part of the nail.

These hens are relatively easy to handle. They squawk a little when we pick them up but usually settle right down when we put them on our laps. We’ve had to handle them quite a bit in their lives; giving them medicine, cutting off poop that has become hardened around their vents. We had to give Daisy a dose of mineral oil into her vent to remove a broken egg then let her soak in a warm tub. See picture here. We turn them upside down occasionally to check for problems “down south”. Chickens are no different than any other bird. Stuff goes in and stuff comes out. Feathers fall out and feathers grow in. Hormones go crazy and make them cranky and broody. Clipping their nails is just a little thing we can do occasionally to keep them healthy and is relatively easy. Chickens who are kept in cages don’t live long enough to have this pesky problem!.

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Sweetpea and Tulip looking for bugs

We’ve been letting the hens out in the late mornings to scratch around and clean up snails and bugs. This is a good time of day for them to forage and free-range. After a morning run, the labradoodles sleep inside the house for a couple of hours and the hens can have the run of the yard, sans canines.

I don’t know if the labradoodles would really harm the hens but I’m not taking any chances. I heard, through a friend, that a husband let her dogs out when her hens were in the garden. The dogs made short order of the “girls”. Needless to say, the woman didn’t know who to be madder at, the husband or the dogs. I know whom I’d blame!

So we are careful. Labradoodles are inside in their crates when the hens are loose in the garden. And the “ladies” are lovin’ it! They’re finding lots of snails and slugs. They grab them in their beaks and run. The others will join in the chase unless they see something better to eat. They’re finding lots of sow bugs and earwigs. They are unafraid of us humans and our weed diggers and hoes. They stay underfoot, ready to pounce on whatever we uncover for them. I’ve stepped on toes more than once.

Pulling Weeds with the Hens

We’ve been clearing the rose bed of alyssum “Carpet of Snow”. I shouldn’t have let in go crazy this winter but it provides a little color and covers the bare ground around the roses throughout the winter. Now, I need to remove it. Don has been helping me for an hour or two a day this week and we’ve just about finished. The hens have kept us company. I find their little clucks soothing as they go about their foraging. Such a sweet sound.

If you are at all curious about our Australian Labradoodles, I have an article on them at my Central Coast Gardening site.

Have you noticed that Tulip, the Ameraucana (Easter Egger), has not been laying? We tally the number of eggs laid on the white board inside the coop at the end of each day. Tulip molted in October and never “started up” her laying routine again.

Tulip's shell-less (or "rubber") egg

Now she’s begun laying soft-shelled eggs commonly called “rubber eggs”. Not a good sign. A hen will often lay a few shell-less egg over the period of her lifetime, but it usually not a constant thing unless there is something wrong inside her. The hens body does not go through the last step of egg production where the shell covers the membrane with another layer that hardens into the outer shell. This used to happen to Petunia (our little Golden Laced Wyandotte). It would take her by surprise and she would squat and out would come a soft-shelled egg bouncing on the dirt. Rosie, our little glutton, would run over and peck at it and the other hens would gather around and eat the egg’s contents as it spilled out.

Big, beautiful, Tulip has had problems with laying on occasion so this is not a surprise. Last June she was so sick, I had to remove her from the flock for two weeks, keeping her in a cage in the garden shed. See “Tulip is Ill”. Now she again has a problem in her “egg maker”. Her eggs not only have a soft shell, they are not being expelled, and are “stacking up” inside her.

I went to the run the other morning and Tulip was in the corner, head down. Not a good sign for a hen. There, beside her was the most disgusting blob I’d ever seen. Well, almost the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen, after all, I raised boys. Kind of a greenish mass. I was tempted to run but I am a responsible poultry owner and am level-headed and quite mature (at least I’d like to think so). I picked the “thing” up. Yes, in my bare hands. I didn’t want to leave the hens alone with it because they have the philosophy, “If you don’t know what it is, eat it!”

Shell-less egg within and egg, etc. next to a normal egg

Don helped me dissect “the thing”. It was a shell-less egg, within an egg, within an egg, within an egg, within an egg. Five eggs, one inside another. It weighed 8 ounces. Oh, that poor girl. She must have been forming it and carried it around for a month. Within a few hours, she was running around with the other hens, scratching and dust bathing. What a relief she must have felt!.

But I feel no such relief. I know that when things go wrong with the “egg maker” inside a hen, it usually does not correct itself. But there’s always hope. Look at Daisy. She’s had lots of problems over time and is laying lovely eggs now, nearly every day of the week. So, I’m keeping an eye on Tulip. I’ve reduced their “treats” and provided lots of calcium in their diet. Hopefully, she’ll get back to her old self again and give us those big, beautiful, green eggs to enjoy.

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Hens rush to the feeder in the mornings.

It’s the last day of the year and I’m up before dawn in anticipation of a visit from my eldest son and his “lady friend”. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, so we’re lucky to see him here on the West Coast once a year. My refrigerator is full to capacity and I’ve prepared about 8 meals ahead of time so I can relax and enjoy their company. I hope they will have time for “a visit with the hens”. People with little experience handling poultry, get a kick out of an up close encounter with these fascinating creatures.

The hens in November and December have produced very few eggs. They have all molted at the same this year. First to molt was Poppy, the Silver-laced Wyandotte. She stopped laying for about six weeks. Poppy is a pretty consistent layer, giving us an egg every other day. Daisy was next to molt, then Tulip, then Sweetpea. They say that the better layers molt more quickly and resume laying in a shorter amount of time. That seems to be the case in my backyard henhouse. Daisy, the Buff Orpington, is back to laying every day after a six-week molt. She is my best layer. Sweetpea should be next.

As my girls age (they will be three years old in the spring) I will seriously have to consider adding to the flock. I’d like to add a couple of Buff Orpington pullets. Not sure how the “old gals” will take to that. Adding to any flock can be a touchy thing and these girls are “set in their ways”.

Wishing all my chicken loving friends a “Happy New Year”. May abundance and love fill your lives and may you always have a soft featherbed on which to fall.

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