Want to start raising chickens for eggs? Learn the homestead tips to raising the best egg laying hens that will be happy and healthy. Learn what to look for and what to avoid here in our homestead handbook. You are reading Chapter 6 of our Homestead Handbook: Raising Backyard Chickens Chapter 6: Raising Chickens For Eggs     Just as a woman is born with all the ovaries they can possess in their lifetime, female chicken also carry all the undeveloped yolks by the time they are born though they all will not become eggs. A hen can make several eggs a day which is the ideal thing for breeders who raise them for that purpose. Regardless, a chicken lays only a fraction of the total percentage of the eggs they start out with.   It helps to understand the lifecycle of an egg from the beginning for most breeders keen on enhancing healthy eggs often. 6.1 – Egg Formation   A pullets’ (young chicken) life starts begins with two ovaries where only one side grows to be functional. This ‘good’ side is what holds all the undeveloped yolk that range in various sizes. Once the pullet is a few weeks old, it reaches the age it can lay they start to release a yolk every day. This process is known as ovulation and takes place within an hour following the last egg that was laid. Eggs are made quickly and take about 24 hours to develop. “Laying” is simply a cycle a hen goes through when it releases a group of eggs. Excellent layers are often heavy and can release fifty to eighty eggs during each cycle. Leghorns have the potential to make more than an egg a day without break totally to about 364-380 eggs in a year. The Red Sex Links can lay up to 300 eggs a year and the Black Star averages 250 eggs a year. Temperate light are two big factors involved in laying for chicken. The best temperature ranges between 43-78 degrees Fahrenheit. Anything lower than that results in decreased production. Though winter is known to be a period for colder climates, the true reason laying is slowed during this season is from shorter daylight hours. The size of a chicken’s egg is often congruent to their age, so the older they are in age, the bigger their eggs will be. The type of breed they are and how much they weigh are also other influences.  Eggs are categorized into six sizes: pee wee, small, medium, large, extra large and jumbo. If a larger bird lays smaller than expected eggs, it is not normal, and the cause should be looked into. It could be because they are temporally suffering from a poor diet, heat stress or lowered intake of salt and protein. Of the 24 hours it takes for an egg to be made, 20 hours of that time is spent enclosing the eggs within a shell. The color of an egg is decided during the time of formation. You will see hens with white earlobes lay white eggs, and the eggs of a chicken with red lobes are colored brown. The Crevecoeur, Dorking, Redcap and Sumantra, however, are red lobes that are exceptions to the rules and lay egg shells that are white. There are other egg colors that can be a tinted pink, green, blue, or red. The Copper Maran, for example, is a bird that lays the more rare colored eggs like red.   6.2 – Controlling the Environment   Eggs are naturally hatched during the springtime when there is plenty of sunlight. Chicks mature during the autumn or summer or summer seasons when there are fewer periods of light in the day. This goes on and on the same time each year and many breeders look for tricks to work around it to produce more eggs. You can get eggs during the winter – all you need to do is convince your hen into believing they are in the favorable season of daylight. Naturally daylight lasts for about fifteen hours until around fall. You can use artificial light until the spring when light is out for 15 hours each day again. It is important to remember to use the lights every day without fail because even a day’s lapse may get your hen to stop laying. I’m not the best with remembering a lot of things even when they are important, so I often use timers to remind me. If you walk around with your phone 24/7 like me, you can easily set them on your phone and never have to worry about missing a beat on anything. If for some reason that still doesn’t work for you, there’s also keeping your lights on all day but it is wasteful. Not only may your electricity bill increase, you’ll start to see your hen spend more of their time huddling indoors doing all types of mischief. There is no “night” to them so they will spend no real time resting which isn’t good for them physically as well. Many who are looking to increase the number of eggs their chicken can lay. Look for ways to discourage hens to brood, or hatch their eggs. Several good methods to avoid brooding would be to not let eggs accumulate in nests, inhibit access to the nest so the hen can’t get to it, physically removing the hen from the nest and to a separate housing,   6.3 – Looking for “Bad” Eggs   Unfortunately, not all the eggs that are produced will be used. Many of them may just not be up to par with quality such as texture, strength or shell color. Other factors include the egg possessing inadequate nutrition or are infested with parasites or disease. Eggs provide clues in detecting several physical or cognitive challenges in your layer. Eggs that appear bloody are often due to young chicken laying before their body is physically able and their tissue tear. It could also be from excess protein or coccidiosis that causes the intestines to bleed. Thin eggs are a result of pullets laying too early as well. Healthy eggs should be a particular shape and may be rounded, pointed or blunt depending on the breed. If you see an egg shell that has a glassy or chalky appearance to it, it may be a malfunction on the hen’s shell making. This type is safe enough to eat, but it will never be the kind that can hatch due to its low porosity. Wrinkled or oddly shaped eggs can happen from careless manhandling practices or a genetic error during the time of ovulation. Soft shells or eggs that are not layered in a shell completely are from stress or nutritionally induced. Some external factor can cause a hen to release the egg prematurely. Vitamin D and calcium are important for the chicken to take because they are bone and shell builders as well as strengtheners. A lack in these two can transfer to the egg visibly. If you take noticed that your chicken is producing fewer eggs than it is supposed to that isn’t related to improper nutrition, low temperatures or dehydration you may want to look into the possibility that they may have contracted a disease. If it is a viral infection, other symptoms include thin shells, depression, restlessness, weight loss and watery whites. Eggs that are laid on the floor over the nest are usually by pullets that are new to the egg laying business. These eggs often are cracked open and dirty, so they are not safe to ingest. Most of these eggs were potentially good eggs, so the best way to prevent them from being on the floor is to make nests early for the young hen prior to the laying period. Placing an egg in a nest for a pullet to see is also good practice to get them to lay their eggs in a proper area and away from the floor. They appear safe to the young chicken and increases the likelihood they will continue to place their eggs in nests in the future. That way, they will not hide their eggs in various spaces that aren’t proper. Eggs should be in a clean environment to ensure they stay clean until it is time to collect them. It is tempting to wash eggs before you gather them, but doing that removes of the protective outer layer that seals in moisture and prevents bacteria from entering. As long as the hens have adequate space between one another and the nests are not in a dirty condition then you are in business – Mother Nature takes care of the rest. If the outer layer of an egg gets dirty, the culprit is likely from the mud on a chicken’s foot. Use methods that ensure it is not a recurring situation by locating the source, cleaning it and redesign where you are placing the nests. Keep the floor from getting damp and move the nest a few inches above the floor.   Good space is also good to have because of the high and low ranks that chicken have. Lower ranks will move about to hide their eggs if they are in a place that is overcrowded. Keeping nests clean now doesn’t need to be messy as long as you upkeep it. Nests should be lined with straw, shavings or shredded paper. It is also a wonder cushion for them and keeps them from cracking. A good inexpensive way to clean out a nest is to use a good cardboard, so that covers the bottom of each nest. Then fold another part of the cardboard over the top of the nest to remove any debris easily. Cardboard should regularly be replaced as chicken do pick at it, and it will eventually get worn out. If you have the expenses, a nest pad is a good option, and it is made to relive messy jobs from happening in the first place.   That was Chapter 6: Raising Chickens For Eggs from our Homestead Handbook: Raising Backyard Chickens Click Here to Read The Next Chapter >> << Click Here to Go Back to the Table of Contents

Jack Quaid plays the Novocaine film’s main character.Novocaine, a new action movie starring Jack Quaid, introduces a fresh take on the superhero genre. It features a hero whose superpower actually exists. Mild-natured Nathan “Novocaine” Caine (Nate) is catapulted into the criminal underworld when his love interest is kidnapped by bank robbers. On his quest to save her from almost certain peril, he absorbs blades and bullets. He even manages to retrieve a gun from a scorching-hot deep-fat fryer that he then uses to shoot a baddy. The movie’s tagline is: “Meet Nathan Caine, he can’t feel pain.” Nate’s “superpower” is a syndrome called congenital analgesia, or congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). As the name suggests, it’s an inability to feel pain. But those who have it really do suffer. Being able to feel pain has many advantages. Congenital insensitivity to pain is something of a misnomer. Technically speaking, you aren’t sensitive to pain – pain is the sensation that the brain constructs from sensory information obtained from the body. This sensory information might include mechanical injuries, such as a prick from a pin or cut from a knife. Or the extremes of hot and cold temperatures, or irritant chemicals like acids coming into contact with the skin. We call these sorts of stimuli “noxious” – meaning potentially damaging to the body. The nerve cells (neurons) that detect these stimuli are hence called nociceptors. They have an essential role in protecting the body from harm. If you step on something sharp, say, you’ll automatically move your foot away. Or if you spill something corrosive on your hand, you’ll rush to a sink to wash the substance off. If nociceptors weren’t there or didn’t function properly, your body wouldn’t be able to generate pain and respond to it accordingly. And your hand, foot or other appendage would remain impaled, burning or sizzling away in the fryer, while you carry on, blithely unaware of the evolving damage. This is the main reason that CIP is so dangerous, though fortunately, it is extremely rare. There are different variants of CIP, and the prevalence varies by sub-type. Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (Cipa), for instance, has an estimated incidence of one in 125 million. What causes the condition? In some, problems arise with the microscopic ion channels in the endings of nociceptors. These allow neurons to become activated by noxious stimulation. You could think of them as on-switches to the generation of pain. When they don’t work properly, pain cannot be perceived. In other conditions, nociceptors may fail to develop properly or die off prematurely. The problem with CIP is that the body becomes insensitive not only to large injuries but smaller ones too. For instance, if you get bits of grit in your eyes, the natural response is to release tears and rub or blink your eyelids to clear them. If there were no pain or irritation, the debris would build up, damaging the sensitive outer regions of the eye like the cornea, potentially causing sight-threatening ulcers to develop. And our bodies don’t just detect external dangers – they are also sensitive to what is going on inside us. If we have an inflamed appendix, a kidney stone, or a broken bone, our nervous system lets us know by generating pain. We sense something is wrong, seek medical assistance, and are treated with antibiotics, surgery and, of course, pain relief. But the consequences of overlooking illness – should you be unable to evoke pain – can be extremely dangerous. People with CIP have been observed to ignore a wide variety of harms – from chomped-off tongues to destructive spinal abscesses, and from amputated digits to recurrent and out-of-control infections. CIP also affects people’s ability to sense temperature, since nociception and thermal information reach the brain via the same route: the spinothalamic tract. This affects the body’s ability to detect and, therefore, respond to temperature changes. This means that patients may overheat, especially as it can affect their ability to lose heat by sweating too. This is the case in patients with Cipa. There is no cure for the condition, but there are ways in which CIP can be managed. People with the condition need to be extremely vigilant for any signs of injury, like wounding, and to monitor their temperature to spot any hidden infections. Regular medical check-ups are also required to look for unnoticed illness and damage. The future is uncertain, but given that the condition is genetic, gene and stem cell therapies might also be potential treatments. So, while Nate might make the most of not feeling pain, his ability is far from being a superpower. Pain may not feel nice, but it saves lives. Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post “Novocaine”—a movie superhero who doesn’t feel pain, like a real-life syndrome appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Suppose humanity was faced with an extinction-level event. Not just high odds, but certain-sure. A nearby supernova will explode and irradiate all life, a black hole will engulf the Earth, a Mars-sized interstellar asteroid with our name on it. A cataclysm that will end all life on Earth. We could accept our fate and face our ultimate extinction together. We could gather the archives from libraries across the world and launch them into space in the hopes that another civilization will find them, reports universetoday.com. Or we could build a fleet of arks containing life from Earth. Not people, but bacteria, fungi and other simple organisms. Seed the Universe with our genetic heritage. Of all of these, the last option has the greatest chance of continuing our story. It’s an idea known as directed panspermia, and we will soon have the ability to undertake it. But should we? The idea of directed panspermia has been discussed since at least the 1970s. Carl Sagan and others even entertained the possibility that life on Earth is the result of directed panspermia from another civilization. But a recent study in Acta Astronautica looks at the idea from an ethical and philosophical perspective, asking what the moral cost of such an endeavor is. Philosophically, the motivation for panspermia is rooted in biocentrism. That is, the idea that a Universe containing life is better or more valuable than a Universe devoid of life. One variety of biocentrism is the idea that more is better. If life on Earth is good, terraforming Mars is better. Colonizing a thousand planets with Earth life is even better. The more cosmic nooks and crannies where life can gain a foothold, the more vibrant the cosmos would be. With this perspective, panspermia would seem to be a moral imperative. Another view is that while life is good, the variety and diversity of life are important. A world rich with fish, trees, flowers, and butterflies is surely better than a planet with only grass and cows. In that case, directed panspermia runs the risk of contaminating other worlds. With this view, it may be ethical to seed the cosmos as a last resort to save terrestrial life, but not to expand the reach of Earth life beyond our solar system. Another factor the authors consider is welfarism. If we send life to distant planets, then intelligent life might evolve on those worlds. Our genetic cousins could experience struggles just as humanity has. Wars, famine, conquest. Would it be just to bring more suffering into the Universe, or is it better to make Earth a more just world before expanding beyond our sky? It’s difficult to derive some hard conclusion from these ideas, but ultimately the authors argue against directed panspermia for now. The potential negatives outweigh the potential positives. Even if you don’t agree with the thoughts of the authors, the work demonstrates the deep ethical questions humanity will face as our technology expands. A century ago, the directed panspermia would have been high fantasy. A century from now, it may be inevitable. The post One Day We Might Seed the Universe With Life. But Should We? appeared first on Anomalien.com.

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Apple is widely expected to give iOS 19 a massive design overhaul at WWDC 2025 after leakers showed design concepts based on what they saw and shared information they heard about Apple's software plans. YouTuber Jon Prosser demoed a Camera app mockup a few months ago, discussing Apple's purported visionOS-based iOS 19 redesign. More recently, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman mentioned the same design plans for the iPhone, saying Apple has bigger plans. All of its operating systems will see similar design changes as Apple plans to make them easier to use. The redesign would make switching between an iPhone, an iPad, and a Mac even more seamless and lay the groundwork for more complex devices of the future, like foldable iPads and Macs with touchscreen displays. Separately, some of the new apps that Apple released already rock the new design, suggesting that iOS 19 will receive similar changes. That's the latest Sports and Invites app, of course. Apple announced WWDC 2025 earlier this week, with the event's first poster teasing some of the rumored changes. The iPhone is supposed to get translucent buttons and menus that seem to be hovering atop other UI elements, similar to visionOS. Unsurprisingly, a designer created an iOS 19 concept that you can supposedly try via App Clips. Continue reading... The post Here’s how you can try the big iOS 19 redesign on your iPhone right now appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Mother’s Day gift ideas 2024: Thoughtful gifts mom will never forget Today’s deals: $169 AirPods Pro 2, $100 off Breville air fryers, $40 Echo Dot, $250 Sony XM5 headphones, more Spring Sale: The ultimate Reolink Wireless Security Camera System is up to 40% off Today’s deals: $2,300 Amazon gift card, $53 Beats Solo Buds, $20 Blink Mini 2, $70 Keurig coffee maker, more

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Tim Curry’s role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains etched in his mind and those who saw it. The musical premiered in London in the early 1970s, making Curry famous for his acting skills. Recently, he reflected on what the production felt like for him and the other cast members. At the time, 29-year-old Tim Curry put the audience in awe and established his status in musical theatre. Over the years, Curry has revisited the Rocky Horror, including an appearance in Fox’s 2016 reboot, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, where he played the role of the Narrator. Tim Curry in ‘Rocky Horror’: the early days Tim Curry/Instagram In the newly released documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, directed by Linus O’Brien, Tim Curry recalls an incident in which he had to compel them to acknowledge his power. He described throwing a “small tantrum” during the show’s early run in London in 1973 to claim his authority and ensure his voice was heard during the production. Despite this moment, Curry fondly remembers the experience as highly creative, noting that they were all surprised by the unexpected success that followed production and positive reviews from fans. His role not only defined his career but also became important to the production, and his performance left viewers talking about the show for a long time. THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, Tim Curry, 1975. ph: John Jay / TM & Copyright ©20th Century Fox. All rights reserved. / Courtesy Everett Collection Linus O’Brien’s perspective The new documentary takes a step further to reveal the impact of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on several people. The show is a message of hope and inspires confidence in self-expression. Linus O’Brien, son of Richard O’Brien, who was just a year old when it premiered, also reminisced about it. THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, Tim Curry (center), Nell Campbell (right, gold top hat), Patricia Quinn (maid’s uniform), Richard O’Brien (bald, second from right), 1975. TM & Copyright ©20th Century Fox. All rights reserved./courtesy Everett Collection He recalled reading some comments from fans on the YouTube page for the song I’m Going Home, one of the songs on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He was so touched by their testimonials and stories about it. Although he had always loved the show and known its significance to viewers, he was even more convinced about its impact. Next up: New Book Recounts The Moment Yoko Ono Realized John Lennon Was Dead The post Tim Curry Reveals Story About ‘Small Tantrum’ He Had On Set Of ‘Rocky Horror’ appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Peace A