When we started farming, I learned that chickens could lay eggs in more colors than just white and brown. I was so excited. I went on a hunt to find all the most beautiful birds that would lay the whole rainbow of colours for me. It took me a few years. But I have been very happy with the results.
When we first started selling our rainbow eggs, I wrote up little info sheets to place in each carton to help educate our customers about the eggs and the chickens as well as our raising practices. Despite my best efforts, we still had a few customers weirded out by the multicoloured eggs. I am happy to say most of our customers are now thrilled with our rainbow eggs.
The farm we started at was a fancy fowl farm and had all sorts of pens, indoor and outdoor to separate all these breeds in the spring, because in order to maintain the integrity of the heritage chicken breed, I had to separate them into their breeding groups each spring hatching season.
And this was no problem at the old farm.
I think I was at about 16 heritage breeds ( with at least one rooster for each) when we moved to our lowville farm. Unfortunately, there were no pens to separate the breeds. Let alone the 16!!!! I needed. So, after trying a few mobile pen breeding scenarios, we decided to go to Featherstone farmyard mix. I figure after a number of generations we may have a new breed but in the mean time only the most colourful and perfect eggs are selected for hatching and let me tell you, these birds have been the most healthy and beautiful birds we have ever raised. And it’s a wonderful surprise what they will look like and what color egg they will lay. It’s been a real pleasure to share that with our chick customers over the past couple years.
I really do go out and tell the ladies in the nest boxes that their babies are alive and doing well and have found some new wonderful homes to go to. It seems weird raising egg layers and not hatching any, I’m so happy we do.
Featherstone Farm 