Graphing Eggs

We had a little visitor to the farm this week. She loved seeing the new chicks.

Isn't she cute?
She was so gentle with the chicks.
They came over and ate while she was watching.

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Every year we spend a few weeks counting how many eggs we get every day. We figure out how many eggs we get from the chickens, and how much money we spend on food. It gives us a good idea of how much our eggs cost. I make a graph to see which color eggs we get the most of, too.

Ewwwww!!!
Sometimes I forget that I put an egg in my pocket!
Time to wash my jacket.

Here is my egg count for this week.

• Friday, April 12 I collected no blue-ish eggs, 3 green eggs, 4 brown eggs, and 3 duck eggs
• Saturday, April 13 I found a stash of eggs in the hay barn! I collected 6 blue-ish eggs, 10 green eggs, 17 brown eggs, and 9 duck eggs
• Sunday, April 14 I collected no 3 blue-ish eggs, 5 green eggs, 12 brown eggs, and 1 duck egg
• Monday, April 15 I collected 3 blue-ish eggs, 3 green eggs, 14 brown eggs, and 1 duck egg
• Tuesday, April 16 I collected 1 blue-ish egg, 4 green eggs, 7 brown eggs, and 2 duck eggs
• Wednesday, April 17 I collected 2 blue-ish eggs, 4 green eggs, 5 brown eggs, and 2 duck eggs.
• Thursday, April 18 I collected 4 blue-ish eggs, 3 green eggs, 8 brown eggs, and 1 duck egg.

I collected 134 eggs this week. That's a lot of eggs! Chickens and ducks don't lay that many eggs during the winter. They ate about 3/4 of a bag of food this week. 

Chicken food costs $17 for a bag. That means it cost us $12.75 to feed them.

134 eggs divided by 12 (a dozen) = about 11 dozen eggs. (The actual number is 11.16, but that's really close to 11 dozen eggs)

$12.75 divided by 11 dozen eggs = $1.15 a dozen to feed the chickens in the spring.

Other things that we spend money on to raise the chickens includes electricity to keep their water from freezing in the winter, shelter, clean bedding for their pen, and gas to drive the truck that picks up the food.

We also spend a lot of money raising new chicks each year. Chickens don't lay eggs until they are about 7 months old. I have to feed them a lot of food before they lay eggs.

It's important for us to do some math to figure out how much the chickens cost us, and how much we should charge for eggs.

We spend less money on food in the summer because the chickens eat a lot of bugs in the summer and don't eat as much food. We spend more money on food in the winter because there aren't any bugs or grass to eat.

This is what my graph looks like this week.

Did you make a graph? What is different about your graph? What is the same?

Here's an interesting egg! One of our chickens laid an egg with no shell.

If you soak an egg in vinegar you can take the shell off the egg so it looks the same as Quin's egg.

See how squishy it is?

Your teacher has a whole bunch of eggs for you to look at! Have you seen a turkey egg before? Or a duck egg in real life?

Be careful! The eggs don't have anything inside them so they are very easy to break!

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Are you wondering how Echo is doing?

She's doing great!

Her eye is all healed up, and she didn't get an infection!

The veterinarian thought her injury would take 2 weeks for her to heal up. We took very good care of her and she healed up in 1 week.

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Here's a fun project that I worked on this week!
There are treats inside each bunny bag.
I made 22 bunny bags this week. 

Next week I'll show you how we dock a lamb's tail. Did you know lambs are born with long tails?