Just when I thought backyard chicken farming couldn’t get any more interesting, I started getting blue eggs from my favorite hen, Chewbacca.

Once she started a couple weeks ago, she hasn’t stopped laying them. I get one egg/day without fail, and if I am around for lunch that day, nothing taste better than a blue eggs and ham sandwich. Chewbacca is an amazing breed of chicken known as the Americana (actually spelled Ameraucana, but I don’t like that spelling). When I purchased her a few months back, I was told that when she starts laying, her eggs would be either brown, pink or blue. Half the fun is waiting for the first egg to arrive to see what color “egg gene” the chicken has. Because of the variety of color, these chickens are also known as Easter Egg chickens.

Now that she is laying, all three of my chickens are in production mode, which means we get 2-3 eggs/day. After the initial trials of broken chicken coops a nd raccoon/hawk/possum attacks, my little backyard experiment is beginning to pay off. Not that urban farming is a hobby that is meant to be a profitable venture; it is nice to know that I can now officially stop buying eggs. My quick profit-loss analysis looks like this:

Revenue (measured in savings) Eggs (18/week) - $3/week Eggs over the year - $150

Costs per year: Feed - $50 Water – Free (basically) Leftover dinner – Free

Profit: $100/year