Magic the hen is still in isolation while her foot heals from whatever happened to it. She is shuffling around more, and doesn’t need to be moved in order to reach her food and water anymore. Apparently the special treatment caught Twilight’s attention, and when I opened the cage after taking this picture, she hopped in with Magic. She was back out again when she realized I was putting in fresh shavings, not handing out treats!
My eldest and I did another chicken check, where we check under wings for mites, check their vents, check their feet, and get a weight. Most of the chickens’ weight is still recovering from the winter, however Magic’s has gone down, which is not surprising since she is still in isolation with a healing foot. She is starting to shuffle around her enclosure, so I hope she is on the mend. Seashell also had a drop in weight. Turns out she had an infected foot, which we cleaned out and bandaged. Her feet are particularly prone to infection and bumbles. It probably doesn’t help that they are put together a little differently than the other chicken’s feet. Faverolles are supposed to have five toes, and the “extra” toes protrude from inside the foot. When they walk, they have to negotiate not only the terrain, but also those toes. Seashell’s legs are a little shorter, her feet rotate out a bit, and she has an extra nail on one of her extra toes. Makes for more scrapes and injuries to her feet.
Today is National Poultry Day! Strut your stuff, ladies.
In honor of this day I moved their salad garden to a new spot and let them turn over the old plot (ok, really more of a coincidence, but it worked out well). Happy chickens. Well, except for Magic who is still in isolation unable to walk, but she has been starting to put a little more weight on her left leg and using it to shuffle a little. I suspect a sprained or broken toe, rather than a disease since the leg is not paralyzed. She lets me clean the pine shavings off her beard, like the chickens let the alpha hen do. So there we go.
Poor Magic’s foot is bothering her. I thought it was a bumble (I did the bumble surgery and removed a large lump), but typically my hens are back in their feet and moving around better after the procedure. Magic just holds the foot up pathetically, then lays down in the dirt. So she is in the isolation ward away from the bugs. She has food and water, and gets hand fed grubblies. I’m hoping some rest time will help. And if it is something else, at least she is not mingling with the flock.
Powdered eggs is going to be my go-to method of long term egg storage! My hens are laying up a storm, and I finally had an excess of eggs to try dehydrating eggs. I followed the Dirty Gourmet’s instructions (here). I hand whisked the eggs until they were slightly foamy. Five 50g eggs fit in each of my fruit leather trays (I did two trays), just like hers did. I dehydrated at 140 degrees for 10 hours, then removed all the dry bits, but had to flip over a section on each tray and dry another couple hours. At this point it was bedtime, so I put all the bits in a gallon freezer bag in the freezer. In the morning I put all 10 dehydrated eggs in my food processor and blended until it was a coarse powder.
I weighed the resulting powder and figured that each egg was reduced to 12 g. The Dirty Gourmet recommends reconstituting with 1 Tablespoon and one teaspoon of water. I tried that, but the eggs were still quite thick. I weighed an egg shell (7 g) and taking the weight of the whole egg (50 g), figured that 31 g of water was lost for each egg (that is 2 Tablespoons). I used this ratio to rehydrate 3 eggs worth of powder and made two batches of pancakes, one with fresh eggs, and one with the powdered eggs. Both mixed and cooked up fine, and my family said they couldn’t taste a difference. I think the powdered eggs made a slightly finer textured pancake. The best part is that I think I can probably store 50 dehydrated eggs in a single gallon bag. I am storing the powder in the freezer as recommended, but the space savings is considerable! I think I can also comfortably process 15 eggs at a go. Maybe I won’t have to buy eggs next winter. Maybe.
Critters and Craft 