Free Range Hens = Happy Hens

​On our 5 acre farm here in beautiful Tulsa, our girls have free range access to over 3 acres of land and enjoy a diet of wild plants, bugs and some additional grains that we provide each morning. They love to forage from early in the morning until late afternoon and when they are ready they march right inside the henhouse and go to roost for the night. Super easy for us! 

​​We have different varieties of hens, Americauna, Austrolorp and Leghorns. 

This summer we have 18 new little ones, adding Brahmas and Buff Orpingtons to our hen house. The Brahmas are particularly cute with their little feathered feet!

Each breed of chicken lays a different color egg - Leghorns lay white, Austrolorp lay brown and the Americaunas (also called the Easter Egg chicken) lay a blue-blue/green egg. No matter the color, they all taste the same - delicious!

The flavor of a free range farm egg is amazingly different than the ones you may purchase at the store. Also the color is incredibly vibrant, a beautiful bright yellow and even almost orange! If you haven’t tried a fresh from the farm egg, reach out and grab some today!

We started raising chickens because of our desire to have healthy food options where we know how they are raised and what they eat. While we also thought it would be a cheaper option, I'm not sure about that now!  Although they sure have been a constant source of entertainment around the farm! They are always doing crazy chicken things and have funny little personalities.

I get a lot of questions about the chickens and the eggs, so I thought sharing them here would be helpful in case you were wondering the same thing!
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Q. How long do the eggs stay good?
A. Fresh Farm eggs actually stay fresh much longer than their store bought versions. The FDA requires that eggs in factory farms be "sterilized" and washed which removes the protective covering that naturally occurs during the egg laying process. Typical store-bought eggs are several weeks old when you get them.
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Q. I heard that farm eggs don't have to be refrigerated. Is that true.
A. In fact it is true. Eggs fresh from the coop can be left out on the counter for 1-2 weeks without a problem (assuming they haven't washed the covering off) and many more weeks in the fridge. See this awesome egg tray we use everyday.

Q. Don't the blue eggs taste funny?
A. Actually no - they taste no different than a white or brown egg and they look beautiful in the kitchen (especially displayed in this lovely egg tray and perfect for holidays like Easter!

Q. Do you have to have a rooster to get eggs?
A. Nope! The girls are very self-sufficient in that area. You only need a rooster if you want to have little chicks!

Q. My fresh eggs seem to be hard to peel when I hard-boil them. What's up?
A. Fresh eggs, being that they are in fact FRESH, don't have as much of an air layer between the inner egg and the shell which is what occurs after a longer shelf life, thus they can be a bit difficult to peel. We use an Instapot pressure cooker to get them to turn out a perfect hardboiled egg!

Now that you know a bit more about eggs and the ladies that provide them - stop by or call us to pick up some today - or order right online here at our store!

Fun Fact: Old timers call eggs "Hen Apples"
We have a 91 year old neighbor who refers to our girls' eggs as "hen apples". Since we started with our chickens about 10 years ago, the name stuck and we have lots of fun with it!