This is one of two Silky Hen Brood groups.. It's a shame to disturb them but once every day or so I have to reach under them and try to fish out the newly laid Silky eggs without bothering the 10-day old Jidori eggs. Eventually I'll have to DIT (Do It Together: just learned the DIY alternative from the Indonesian Punk Band, Marjilan's IG reel) a row of brood boxes along the night cage here. If I can quarantine the brooders I'll be able to let them hatch Silky eggs. Now the Jidori eggs are convenient because they can be distinguished from the smaller whiter Silky eggs.. There's no need to mark the eggs to keep track of older and newer ones.. If you're not careful they end up trying to hatch more than 10 eggs.. It's a waste because, after the first few chicks, the remaining eggs ever seem to go well. I should replace the two remaining unhatched eggs under the other brooders group..

#SilkyHens #SilkyEggs #JidoriEggs #烏骨鶏 #烏骨鶏雌鶏 #烏骨鶏卵 #地鶏卵

Organic farmer friends told me they had an aversion to orange yolks and a preference for yellow yolks. Until now I couldn't remember which color was preferred. But a local produce store had eggs from a place I've visited. The former JICA facilitator worked in Central America and now practiced the sort of mixed (animal/plant) agriculture he preached. He showed us where he ferments rice powder 米糠 leavings from the rice hulling process. He mixes in a variety of things. The one thing I remember is the bonito flakes and whatever else is used to make the soup stock at a nearby Soba buckwheat noodle restaurant. An old friend that makes a living for his family raising 50yen eggs had a special recipe for fermenting various things for a healthy chicken feed. It seems like the people that can avoid the store-bought corn-based feed raise eggs with a nice yellow color. The photo of two eggs has an older heirloom variety egg (orange, broken yolk) next to the KazuRan egg raised with hand-made fermented feed. The photos of three eggs are of my cute little Silky egg on the left, the fermented feed egg in the middle and a good-quality store-bought brown egg on the right. The Silkies here run around and augment their store-bought feed (along with old rice, and peoples' old wheat flour, rice flour, whatever) with bugs, worms, and leaves all day.

The silky egg on the left doesn't seem quite as orange as the store-bought egg on the right, right? It was nice to have a chance for this side-by-side comparison. It's hard for me to notice much difference. The urge to compare was a great excuse to make NiraTama ニラ玉 where you mix in chipped Chinese chives (Allium tuberosum) while scrambling eggs and fry the mixture. It must be healthy..

#SilkyEggs #EggComparison #ChickenEggComparison #EggYolkColor

Happy Breakfast!!

#SilkyEggs #eggsAndOnions

Breakfast!!
#SilkyEggs #身土不二　目指せばいいかも‼️？！？！ #FriedOnions #OnionRings #OnionsAndEggs

Silky eggs. These go for a 100 yen at the local produce "Michi-no-Eki" stores. We got started with these dollar eggs from a few different local stores. It took a while though: the first 3 hatchlings were all roosters, one egg hatched into an aggressive Miyazaki-breed bird that caused all sorts of havoc. We're set now, we just keep the considerate roosters that share food and are generally nice to the little chicks...
#SilkyEggs #BackyardChickens #SilkyChickens

Today's eggs, with #FukuRokuJyu. He's my fashion-leader (role-model?) among the #SevenLuckyGods. I think of them as Spritis of Abundance, A recent David Graeber article has me thinking maybe they are like words. I.A. Richards wrote that words were the missing parts of contexts, or experiences. Words help us complete ourselves and experiences. Maybe all the different representations of the Seven Lucky Gods work[ed] like that for people.

After a year or so struggling with cheap incubator machines the Silky hens just increase the flock. We just make sure they can eat during the day and be safe at night and we keep getting more an more birds. The task now is to find adopters. More people are showing serious interest now that eggs are getting expensive here too.

It's not hard to keep the birds fed and happy with culled plants from gardens and fields, old un-hulled rice from neighbors, free beef fat from supermarkets, BSFL maggot-like critter from compost piles, baked-sweet potato skins, left-over fruit, various weeds... And we end up with eggs and more birds. This earth of our is a place of abundance, we should be enjoying "plenitude" is the feeling I get from these birds and their eggs.

So that's why I feel that it's appropriate to take photos of the eggs next to one of the Spirits of Abundance, #福禄寿。
#eggs #BackYardChickens #Silky #SilkyEggs #Chickens