Learn About Our Special Animals
Meet Benjamin, an Easter Egger. Benjamin came to us in November 2018. He was one of two drop-off roosters. The person that brought him understood that he would become food.
I remember seeing him for the first time. He was a beautiful young rooster. I looked at Andrea and said “You know we can’t kill him”. She agreed. Our flock was growing and we had room for another boy.
A few chicken breeds lay blue eggs, and Benjamin is one of those. His beautiful colors are accompanied by fluffy cheeks and slate-colored legs. And he passes the blue egg gene every time he mates. In 2020, Benjamin was at the top of his game, meaning he was passing out a LOT of genes! We incubate our eggs for the Rent-a-Chick program and our broody hens, so there were a lot of Benjamin babies hatched in 2020 and even 2021.
We don’t control breeding, so when Benjamin mates with a brown laying hen, the offspring hens may lay brown, blue, or even green eggs. And some of the hens don’t even look like Easter Eggers. We have black hens that lay beautiful green eggs.
Thanks to Benjamin, we have a big increase in the number of blue and green egg layers. They all taste the same, but it’s fun to have colorful eggs. We like to put different colored eggs in the cartons we sell, and in years past, we struggled to put one blue egg in each carton. But now, we often put two or even three blue eggs in each carton, and sometimes we are able to make up an entire carton of blue eggs.
Benjamin is in retirement now. He mostly stays to himself and doesn’t mate much. He loves to join us on the back porch if we’re handing out snacks, especially bananas. The way chickens age, I know he doesn’t have much time left. But he’s left a legacy of blue egg layers that will be with us for years to come.
If you visit the farm to get eggs, and notice the abundance of blue eggs, you can thank Benjamin.