Egg shortage in the UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/04/supermarkets-fear-egg-shortages?INTCMP=SRC

Does Idlepirate still come around? I'd be curious to get a first hand account of what's it like. Calif passed a law doing able with battery cages and it's rumoured Calif egg farmers will go out of business sooner or later because of the high cost of rehousing the chickens. Also, not sure how egg farmers are to keep that quantity of chickens from pecking each other severely or to death with the new law.

I'm in favor of improving conditions for laying chickens and I usually try to buy cert. organic or reputable cage free/free range suppliers. But they do need to put a gradual enough curve on the regulations that the industry doesn't collapse. I can certainly see prices going up significantly, but at some level the point is to reduce the quantity of chickens in a certain amount of space. There must be ways to go vertical with it to mitigate that, but...

Go back to back yard chickens.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/feb/01/san-diego-city-council-approves-backyard-chickens-/

I'm always here on and off hehe:)

actually I only read about this this morning in the metro! funny you mentioned it as it also got my attention. Heres the article i read:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/893739-egg-rationing-in-place-as-supplies-drop-after-eu-battery-hen-law

I haven't noticed much change yet, eggs are generally expensive for their quality here. I much preferred the quality in Switzerland.

Really if it affects us much it will probably be easier to just get some chickens for the backyard. I like my eggs too much
But yes at the moment I haven't noticed any drastic changes yet. Ill let you know when this starts to take affect.
It looks worse for the rest of europe where they give you an egg limit in germany due to all the people crossing the border from czech republic to buy eggs....

Fresh eggs from your own chickens are yummy!!!
When I first started keeping chickens I thought there was something "wrong" with my eggs. The whites are cloudy, the yolk is a lot darker, and are hard to peel when hard boiled. These are all signs of extremely fresh eggs.

I used to give away my "old" eggs (a week old). Now I keep "old" eggs for hard boiling as they're easier to peel.

We may go for horse property up in the Palmdale area. If so, I'll definitely look into laying hens, I'd love to have my own fresh eggs. How many hens do you need to keep if you use about a half dozen to a dozen eggs a week? How much work are they?

I used to have just 2 hens. We're not big egg eaters. Primarily eat eggs on the weekend. So, yeah, maybe a dozen eggs a week. The 2 hens kept us in plenty of eggs. Young hens lay pretty much every day so we'd get 2 eggs a day. I haven't tracked really at what age their egg production decreases, but commercial layers are rotated out annually. My chickens right now range in age from 3 to 7 years old. I get maybe one egg every day, every other day right now (4 hens). Also, backyard chickens are seasonal layers so production will go down in the winter months like most birds. I suppose you could put them on supplemental light to get more eggs year round. When I had about a dozen hens I had so many eggs coming out my ears I was giving them to the FedEx guy, the UPS guy, anyone who wandered too close.

I have mine in a large pen with goats. It's huge. I shovel out the whole thing twice a year. A small coop you'd have to clean more regularly. Free roaming in your yard, dunno. Suppose you could just hose off areas. My friend had a small flock free roaming in her yard. She never had to clean it really. The yard was huge. The chicken poop would just work into the lawn. There'd be bare patches of dirt where the chickens tended to dust bathe. Any poop on the concrete patio she'd hose off. Harder to find the eggs if they're left to free roam in the yard. If I ever find eggs in odd spots and I'm not sure how long the egg's been there, I feed it to the dogs. If they are free roaming they do tend to lay in the same spots so that makes finding the eggs easier over time. In the past I've also put out covered cat litter boxes with hay inside for free roamers. They did lay in those and made finding the eggs easier.

Love it! Now the EU is working on banning sow stalls. Maybe our world isn't so ignorant and hopeless after all.