Single hen

[Bantambabe]

OS added up the Feb tally from our banties this morning. 63 eggs from 3 LS bantams (and we weren't back to 3 laying until 12th Feb). Very proud of the girls and the eggs are looking fab on my egg skelter

[sunshinesupernova]

that's pretty good going by no stretch of the imagination ! They look lovely eggs

[Jaime]

Nice eggs...

 

What does the writing on the eggs say - it looks very neat?

 

They look a fair size for banty eggs, for some reason I thought banty eggs were much smaller - but then I only saw my first bantams this weekend at Reddish Vale Community Farm. They were very pretty - shame you cant mix them with full size bossy ginger hens.

[Bantambabe]

My banties are Light Sussex bantams - so not true bantams and seem quite large for what they are. Infact we gained a "free to a good home" gingernut ranger yesterday and she's not much bigger than them. They will be mixing hopefully in a week or two.

 

The writing on the eggs is actually a date stamp. The kids love to stamp the "best before" date (although in all honesty they never last 28 days), and it's good for their maths to have to work out the date in 28 days time. I got one of those stamps that you turn the wheels to change the date, with an inkpad and food grade ink.

[Jaime]

I have a Gingernut Ranger - she is the worse bully you could ever come across. I dont think I could put smaller birds near her because I'm sure she would bully them to death - she can be really horrible with the others.

 

I got three new chooks a couple of weeks ago and now my grown ups have gone completely on egg strike so no eggs since last Wednesday.

 

I'm fascinated by the banty eggs...

 

do they taste the same as an ordinary garden hen egg (not a yucky shop one)?

 

are they in the same proportion of yolk to white?

 

if you were using them in cooking would you use 2 banty eggs (say in a cake) to one ordinary egg?

[Saronne]

I don't know the yolk to white ratio of banty eggs, but someone else on the forum told me that she weighed her eggs on a digital scale and matched the fat, etc. to the weight of eggs to make a sponge-type cake. So if you had 3 small eggs whose total combined weight was 137, you match that with 137 gm of fat, etc. to get the correct proportions -regardless of the size of your eggs.

 

Saronne x

[Bantambabe]

I don't know how the introductions are going to go Jaime, will cross that bridge later in the week.

 

With regard to the bantam eggs:

The yolk is the same size as in a hens egg - ie you get more yolk to white

The eggs are about 2 thirds the size of a hens egg, so sometimes I double up and sometimes I use 3 instead of 2 etc - I've never been one for following recipes too accurately to be honest so I tend to do it on instinct. A Saronne says though, for recipes such as victoria sponge you are supposed to have the same weight of all the ingredients. So with standard (is there such a thing?) hens eggs which are about 2oz each you would have 4oz flour,sugar,butter and 2 eggs

As I say, my cooking tends to be more guesswork - just ask my kids