Mother Clucking Eggs

Today I'm talking with Kristin at Mother Clucking Eggs.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Have you thought about being a cottage food producer?  Or if you're a cottage food producer, have you thought about expanding it into a small business?  Cottage Food Econ is probably for you.  You can find more information at cottagefoodecon.com and if you use the code HOME15,  you'll get 15 % off your registration costs.

00:29
and that price is valid through the end of November.  So again, check out cottagefoodiecon.com.  A tiny homestead is sponsored by uh cottagefoodiecon.com. Today I'm talking with Kristen at Mother Clucking Eggs in Duluth, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Kristen. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. Is it gray up in the north there? It is a very gloomy day. Yeah. Typical November in the Northern tier states.  It is.

00:59
Yeah, we're gray and it rained a little bit and it's breezy and it's cold. We just got the wood boiler going. Yes, I know. This weekend looks like it's going get down to the 20s. So I'm not quite ready for that, but yes. Yeah, we might get snowflakes. I know. Ready or not.

01:21
Well, it is November what, ninth today?  Yes, seventh. Seventh, sorry. I'm way ahead of myself. um The  running joke in my family is that my birthday is November 4th and my daughter's is November 14th. And so we have a running bet as to whether it will snow by my birthday, in between my birthday and her birthday, or after her birthday.  And we're going to get snow here before her birthday. You think so?

01:51
Yeah, I think so.  And she lives in Florida, so she won't see any snow, most likely. Oh my gosh. Lucky.  Yup. It's really weird having a kid who lives in the South  because she grew up, she grew up partly in Maine and partly here in Minnesota. And then she ended up in Florida. So, right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and mother clucking eggs, which is mother clucking fun to say.  My mom did not like  when I named it that.

02:21
Um, she did not appreciate, but I think it's kind of funny.  is funny. So we moved out to the country,  um, six years ago and  I was obsessed with goats, specifically Nigerian dwarf goats. So,  um,  that was my first order of business was to get some goats. So I have two of those.  And,  um, then the next spring I.

02:48
decided to get some chickens and I started with six and now I don't know what happened but I'm up to 44. Oh chicken math got you. It got me good. Okay so what else do you have anything? Two dogs, two kids and a husband. That is a good way to round it out I think. Yeah yes. Okay I have to ask what kind of dogs do you have? A golden retriever and a silver lab.

03:16
So they're not necessarily livestock guardian dogs, although you may be using them that way. Yes, I do want a Great Pyrenees very badly, but my husband says that we cannot have a third dog. So I said um then we could maybe get a donkey, but he said no.  A dog would be easier than a donkey.

03:36
I know. I know. I agree.

03:41
Well, anyone who's listened to my podcast for over two years now knows we have a dog and I talk about her a lot. I really talked about her a lot in the beginning, but I try not to talk about her as much now.  Her name is Maggie. She's an  Australian shepherd and she only weighs 36 pounds. Oh my gosh. Little. She's a little Australian shepherd.  She was billed as a mini Australian shepherd, but having talked to people who raise Australian shepherds,

04:09
I have been corrected. There is no such thing as a mini or a toy. They're just all Australian shepherds of varying sizes. Oh, I didn't know that either. So there's some, some dispute going on in the Australian shepherd world about  what they're called.  love her to pieces and she is definitely not a livestock guardian dog. She loves every critter that comes on the property  except for possums.  Oh.

04:38
Okay. She thinks possums are cats until she realizes that they're possums and then she's like, oh, and she does this really deep in her throat growl. And that's when I know there's a possum outside because she sees them outside the window. Does she kill them?  No, because she's never she's never been up close with one.  Okay. There was one in the doghouse and she saw it and she thought it was one of our cats who she loves. And she went

05:07
tail wagging up to the doghouse realized it was not one of our cats  and her hackles went up and she was just barking at it. My husband had to drag her in the house. Oh my gosh. And then he killed it instead of her killing it. So well job got done. Yep. She's not a livestock guardian dog, but she thinks she's a big dog. So  that's funny. Okay. So tell me, tell me why you moved to land and what prompted all this five years ago.

05:39
So I was living in more in the city of Duluth and I grew up in Lakeside, so kind of close to Lake Superior.  But I've always liked um nature and being outdoors and  I loved my neighbors, but I was looking to not have neighbors so close  and land  and um we like to hunt. So we have some hunting stands on our land  and I was wanting.

06:08
animals  and just the peace and quiet of the country. So we made the move out here. Okay, was this during COVID? It was right before. Okay. Bet you were glad you moved before COVID because I bet you got a really good price on your land compared to after COVID.  We did. We got lucky for sure. Yeah, us too.  moved in  in August of  2020. um

06:35
So we've been here five years as well. eh And ah really glad my husband was ready to make the leap because if we waited even another year,  we wouldn't have been able to do it.

06:48
Yeah, so understand not wanting to have neighbors really close. We are nearest neighbors a quarter mile away. Yeah. That's great. And we ended up becoming really close with our neighbors and now we have a trail going to each other's houses.  Oh, funny. uh Crazy. Yeah. Okay. So I know your place is called Mother Clucking Eggs, but you have goats. So,  so you have two goats.  We have two goats. Yep. Sullivan and Sebastian.

07:15
Okay, and you just have them because they're fun?  literally just for fun. They serve no purpose. Okay, I'm assuming their weathers that they're not they don't they're not able to reproduce.

07:31
They just rearrange  in the yard. The dogs are all out loose and the goats and the chickens and they all are just, they get along great and they all just walk around the yard together all day.  love it. They're friends.  They're friends. um The thing that a lot of people don't know is if you have male goats that are not um neutered, male goats are stinky and they're gross.  Yes, I am very glad that I do not have that.

07:58
Yeah. So most people don't keep male, unneutered goats for fun.  No. Yeah. mean, male goats that are not fixed can be wonderful animals, but, um, you don't want to be hugging on them.  Nope. Nope. Yeah. They, they are, no spatial awareness. They will come right up on your lap and, um, jump up on the patio table and.

08:26
play with the kids, the kids will be on the swings and they'll be headbutting the swing and pushing them on the swing actually. It's pretty funny.

08:35
Oh, silly.  All right. So, um tell me about the chicken situation. um I know you sell your eggs for $6 a dozen because I saw it on your Instagram page. Yeah. But do you sell like hatching eggs? Do you sell chicks? Do you do any of that? Not yet.  I'm hoping to get more into that next year. I have five roosters right now.  And I actually got some hatching eggs from a lady.

09:03
this past spring and I put them in my incubator and hatched them. So that was pretty fun. Um, so they are a little better quality of a chicken and they lay a really cool, like deep green brown color. um and those colors are hard to find in chickens that you buy from hatcheries. So I'm kind of making the shift now from buying chicks  at, from hatcheries online or,  um, the local feed store and getting more into breeding and, um

09:32
hatching on my own. that's been kind of fun. is my last, this past spring was my first time doing that.  Okay. So this, this brings up a couple of questions for me because we have chickens too, but we have them basically for eggs. We sell eggs from our our farm stand to our community.  And that's, that's pretty much it. And they're just the, uh, the ISA, they used to be reds, but now they're calling them Browns, ISA Browns.

09:58
And they are friendly, they are calm, they don't attack you when you try to take their eggs. We love them. great.  And I don't ever see us branching into  getting chickens for different colored eggs because the purpose of ours is just  to keep people fed. is it just that you're interested in the breeding and the different colors and the different varieties of chickens or what is it about it that makes you want to go further?

10:28
So when I first got chickens, I was getting all the frizzles and the silkies and the polish and all the funny, cool-looking chickens. And  they were decent layers, but they were all just like your typical light tan colored egg. And then  my first colored egg came from my Americana who lays light blue. And I was like, this is kind of fun. So  I started researching more on what chicken breeds lay different colors.

10:56
That was a slippery slope, which is why I ended up with 44. Um, because I just started getting all these other different kinds. And it's fun because there might be a breed that lays greens or greens and blues, but you don't know exactly what shade or what it will look like, or if it's going to have a heavy bloom or be speckled. And I just think that it's so cool. The variety of eggs that you can get from one animal. And it's kind of like a game. Like I'm.

11:26
Now trying to get more speckles in my eggs and which two can I breed to try to get that and just making my cartons a little prettier and more fun. And yeah, it's been fun. Okay. And I was not absolutely not giving you a hard time about it. It's just that my husband is the one that really handles the chickens and the garden. And if I said to him, Hey, we should get a whole bunch of different kinds of chickens so we can have a rainbow.

11:54
carton to sell to people, he would look at me like I was cracked.  My husband probably would have too, but I more just come home with  more eggs and chickens.  there was actually a time this summer where he looks at me and he goes, um how many chickens do we have? And when I told him the number, think his jaw about hit the floor because I think he thought we were more in like  the 20 range.  Uh huh.

12:19
Yup. I try so hard to keep out of  the gardening and the chicken stuff because  my husband is the gardener. He is obsessed with it. I have said it a billion times on the podcast in the last two years.  And he's not obsessed with the chickens. He thinks that it's very easy because basically we get our laying hens from a friend who raises them and we get them at about 18 to 20 weeks. And then a couple of weeks later, they start laying. So

12:46
It's simple. get the chickens, we put them in their coop. There's a nice run for them. He feeds them, he waters them. We have eggs. works out  great.  That's all he wants. And that's all I want him to want. We're good.  However,  all that. Yeah. Well, we have talked about that. He has actually brought it up a couple of times  and I said to him, I said,

13:13
I don't really have any problem with getting the incubator and the laying eggs and the whole bit. said, but where are we going to put the brooder?  I because if we're going to do it, we need to do it in like, it takes six, five to six months for them to be ready to lay. And that means that they're going to have to be in side. I don't want a stinky brooder in my kitchen and there's no other place to put it.  I get that. Yeah, that's fair.

13:43
And he was like, well, maybe we could put it in the greenhouse because the greenhouse is warm through the winter. And I'm like, I am afraid of that because, and I'm always afraid of stuff. will, I will be honest. I was like, I'm afraid of that because what if  something goes wrong with the heat lamp  catches on fire and we lose our greenhouse.  And he was like, Oh, I hadn't thought of that. And I said, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. greenhouse was built with a grant.

14:12
that we got that I applied for and it was $5,000 and we cannot replace that greenhouse if it goes up in flames. So probably not on the brooding, the brooding chickens, know, baby chickens, but we will always have chickens as long as we can. Yeah, they're so fun. I love them. Do you name yours?  No,  no, we do not because chickens are food.

14:43
The first chickens we got, we got four and we named them A, B, C, and D. And my next door neighbor at the time said to me, why are they A, B, C, and D? And I said, because everybody keeps asking us if we name them. And if they're really pushing, I say, Anna, Bella, Kara, Dana. And she was like, oh, A, C, and D. And I said, uh-huh, any name that starts with A, B, C, or D.

15:10
She was laughing so hard. thought she was going to pee her pants.  That's smart. But no, we don't name food.  It's just a bad plant and we try not to have favorite chickens. We did rabbits for a while and  oh, I don't want to do rabbits ever again because baby rabbits are the cutest thing ever.  Yeah, I would not be able to do that. Yeah, no, we did it  and we did it for a year and we got one litter out of two does and a buck and I was just like, we're not feeding rabbits to feed rabbits. Forget it.

15:40
Yeah.  But those babies from that one litter, oh my sweet, ever loving Jesus, they were so sweet. Oh, that's so fun.  Yeah. And it's really funny because I've talked to a couple other people that raise chickens and they have some form of  cluck in name of their business. Yeah. And I'm always really careful about saying it because, you know, I don't want to get in trouble on a podcast. uh

16:08
What I will tell you is that when the chickens are being stupid, my husband and I call them mother cluckers all the time.  Oh yes.  See, it's perfect. It's just fitting. Yep. And way before we ever got chickens, I have a friend who lives in Cloquet or Duluth. I don't know which it is.  And they're the ones that have the locally laid egg company. Oh yeah. Lucy and Jason. Yeah, I've seen them. um

16:37
I had found her on Facebook  about something else. She writes, she writes books. And so I was talking to her about her books and she, she messaged me at some point and said, we're, we're, my husband is decided, has decided we're going to start a chicken business. And I said, oh, really?  And she said, yeah. And I said, how many? And she was like hundreds. I was like,  Oh,  okay. A business.  And she was like, yeah. And she said, she said, yeah. She said, and they're all going to be named Lola. Yep.

17:07
And I said, Lola, and she said, yeah, for locally laid. And I was like, okay.  And as I watched her, as I watched her business grow,  way that they play on chicken language is ridiculous.  It's so fun.  is fun. That's awesome. And I think they're still in the business and they also ended up getting into like,  I want to say blueberries or strawberries or something. They're at, I think they do the, aren't they at the honey berry place?

17:40
Yes, sorry. Yes, Honeybird. Okay, yeah. Yep, they're super nice people. I love Lucy so much. She's great.  That's awesome. And she's a neighbor too, to you, so. Yes,  yes she is. Have you met them?  No, just at like different events in Duluth. Okay, yeah. Not like actually.

18:04
I have not met Lucy yet either because I'm never up in Duluth. I've been to Duluth once. It's beautiful. Duluth is a beautiful city. Anyone who's listening who wants to visit Minnesota,  do not go to Minneapolis. Go to Duluth. Duluth is way prettier.  Yes, we love it up here. Yep. And there's so many small businesses in Duluth that are just so amazing.  are.

18:32
And we need to support small businesses. go, go to Duluth, go support a small business in Duluth. It'll be great.  Okay. So,  um,  when egg prices started to spike, what a year and a half ago now. Yeah.  Did you start selling more eggs? I did.  I did. That's about when I started selling eggs actually is when,  um, we saw the egg prices go up  and  I started, um,

19:01
My counter was flooding with eggs and I was giving to family and friends and more just giving them away. And we still really couldn't keep up with how many eggs we had. And my husband was like, why aren't you selling these? And I was like, I don't know. It just seems like too much work. I guess I've never really thought about it. And then one of my childhood best friends is the one that really gave me the final push to start mother clucking eggs. And she helps me a lot with different designs and more the

19:30
social media and tech part of it. I'm not really tech savvy, so she's been really helpful for that.  And I started selling  more to just like coworkers and people that I knew when I started the Instagram and it was pretty fun  to start having people that I didn't even know message me for orders and um meeting up with people in the community for.

19:56
fresh eggs and it just kind of took off from there. So for a while I was um more like taking orders, like you would message me and ask for however many dozen that you wanted.  And I would message you when your order was laid, but the list was getting so long that people were waiting four or five weeks for their order. So um I stopped doing it that way. And um most recently I sold out of a outside of a

20:26
local salad place down in Lakeside, um just right outside on the street. And that was a lot of fun.

20:34
Nice. So you guys don't have a farm stand at your place? No, we don't. It wouldn't be a good road for that. We don't have a shoulder on our road  and we're kind of more tucked back. It's not a busy road at all.  And um also I watch too much true crime for strangers come to my house. Yeah. I don't, I don't watch or listen to true crime at all.

21:02
I'm like, nah, I don't need to make myself more scared than I usually am.  I'm good. I'm going to believe that the world is full of good people.  And if I get murdered  at my house, then  it's suddenly not my problem anymore.

21:20
Yes. I would like to live to a ripe old age of like  200. 200 would be great, but  I don't see that happening, but that would be cool.  I would, I would really like to just die in my sleep while I'm dreaming when I'm old. That would be great.  Yeah. like a great idea to me. um Okay. So let me think here.  What, what breeds of chickens do you have right now? Holy moly.

21:50
All of them.  Yeah. Yeah. I have um maybe like seven silkies.  drove um like two hours one way to pick up four, um what are they called? Satin lace silkies. Those are really cool.  So those are more just like little fluffy fun.  I definitely do not have those for the eggs. More just cute little fuzzy cotton ball things.  And then we have um

22:19
Americana is the ISA Brown speckled Sussex fired rocks. um Golden laced, silver laced, Rhode Island reds. um Some that just hatched in the barn sometimes without me even knowing that was happening. So maybe a dozen are just mixes that um usually the silky is hatched because they are broody quite often.

22:48
And,  um,  we have buff Brahma's buff, Orphan Tins, Cochins,  um, a lot of Marins. um

23:05
Yeah, a lot.  White leg corn. Are the marins the ones that lay the really dark brown eggs? Yes. The reddish brown eggs. Yep. So my favorite ones are crossed with um olive eggers.  So what happens there? What color do they end up being? So the bird itself is just jet black with a copper neck and then the eggs are um like a deep.

23:34
green brown and actually one of mine are laying like a super, super dark chocolate brown, which I was not expecting. And I was so excited when I went out to the coop and saw that it was a couple of weeks ago and I still have the egg in my fridge because I just can't throw it away. I can't do it. Yeah. It's a jewel in  the refrigerator. Yes, it is. is. Somebody told me to poke a little needle hole and then like blow the yellow coat.  Yeah.

24:05
Yeah. And that way you can keep it. Yeah. We'll see. Sounds kind of gross. It's not. I've done it for Easter eggs. Yeah. So you mentioned the Orpingtons or Orphingtons, however you pronounce it. Yeah. Yeah. We picked up some, some, uh, pullets from a guy 20 minutes away, two summers ago, and we didn't know what kind of breed, what, what breeds they were. We were just like, we need 12 chickens. And he was like, pick one, the ones you want. Yeah.

24:35
And he had all these different little bullets running around in his barn. And there were two  that were sort of like silvery gray and they were really pretty. And I said to my husband, said, if you can catch at least one of those guys, I would love one of those.  And my husband walked over and had a net and scooped it up and put it in the box. We had the ones and we brought them home  and I didn't know what they were. And as it got older, it just got more and more  beautiful.  I

25:04
Finally just took a picture of it and uploaded it to whatever the thing is on Google where it'll tell you what you have. Yeah. And it said something lavender, lavender orpington.  Ooh, that's on my wish list. And oh my God, what a beautiful chicken. Like I am not in love with chickens. They are a means to an end for me, but I was a little smitten with this one. What color egg did she lay?  I don't know. Okay. Because they all lay in the chicken.

25:34
the laying boxes and we never know who lays what. So I don't know, but beautiful animal. It's hard when you find one that you want to know which egg they're laying and it's hard to figure it out. Yeah, unless you know the breed. mean, Americanas tend to lay green eggs. So if you've got a green egg, that's probably what laid it.  But uh that chicken killed over about six months after it got to be an adult.  Oh no.

26:02
And my husband came in and he said, I don't want to tell you. And I'm like,  oh, no, what? Because I thought maybe one of the barn cats had died.  He said, you know your favorite chicken? And I was like, no. He said, yeah. He said, she's laying on the ground dead. And I'm like,  damn it.  Oh, that's always so hard.  He said, you don't even like chickens. I said, but I like that one.  What this one? He was like, you're so silly. said, yeah, That's why you can't pick favorites. I've learned the hard way many times.

26:31
Yeah, and that's why we don't name them and that's why we try not to, you know, have a smi- try not to be smitten with any of them. But that one just had my heart. Yep. And in that same batch, there was another chicken that didn't have any kind of comb. Nothing. It had a round top to its head. Yeah. It was the only one in the whole group that we- that was like that and we named it oddball. We named that one because- because it was an oddball.

26:59
I wonder if it had frostbite or something. It was like that from the very beginning, like a baby. yeah.  Never developed a comb. Just genetic, interesting. Yeah, and so um when Oddball died, um my husband came in and he said,  I don't know whether you're going to be sad or if you're going to laugh. And I was like, what?  He says, Oddball, unalive itself. Herself. What did she do? And I said, how? And he said,  she was.

27:27
He said she was laying on the ground in front of the waterer, because it was on the base, uh on the floor of the chicken coop.  He said, and head under the water in the waterer.  was like, huh. Did it get stuck? He doesn't know. He didn't know what happened. Oh, those are so hard. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, are you sad? And I was like, I'm more perplexed than sad. Yeah, right.

27:52
Yeah, we want to know what happened.  So we lost the  pretty one and we lost Oddball  and  the rest of them were all kind of the same looking chickens so there was no differentiation on them. Yeah. And when you have the same breed of chicken, you don't necessarily get smitten with any of them. Yeah. So that helps. But those are my two chicken stories that are of any importance, I guess is a good word to use. uh

28:21
My favorite thing about chickens is that they give us eggs and they keep us fed and they have very nutritionally dense properties.

28:30
That's my favorite thing.  So,  yeah.  Are you going to get more chickens or are you, have you capped out for a while?  Um, well, we usually lose a few a year to predators. We free range.  um, I'm guessing,  I guess we'll just see where we're at in the springtime. How many we're at. I do have a few that I,  um,

29:00
I'm hoping to get so I'm  I'm guessing I'll get more. Hopefully my husband doesn't listen to this.

29:10
I suspect he probably already knows you're gonna get more.

29:18
Um, one of the things that I love so much about the topic of my podcast is that it's homesteaders and you're not necessarily a homesteader, but she's not necessarily not a homesteader. And what's great is when I talk to people, there's always some farm animal noise in the background. I can hear, I can hear your rooster crowing. uh Pancake, rooster. Yep. Yep.  There was a lady who was, uh, she was pruning her grape vines while we were talking.

29:47
And I could hear  the pruners clicking in the background. That was funny. And there was a lady who had donkeys and they were out in the field. They weren't by the house. And they were braying and you could hear them. are loud. She's like, God, I love the background noises on my bog dance. Yeah, for sure.  So, all right. Well, Kristen, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about all your plans  and about your chickens.

30:16
and about your goats for funsies, I think that's great.  Where can people find you?

30:24
I have an Instagram. It's at mothercluckingeggs. um The goats also have an Instagram. It is linked on that page if you would like to follow them with their adventures.  didn't see it.  What's their name for Instagram? It is Sullivan.Sebastian.Ngd Nigerian  dwarf goat. Sullivan and Sebastian are their names. Oh, there will be people who want to go look at their page. know there will be.  They're pretty fun.

30:51
All right, as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com.  Check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash atinyhomestead.  Kristin, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you so much. You too. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Bye. Bye.