Billy's Egg Farm

The other day we had a field trip to Billy's Egg Farm. It is located close to home in Chino. The front of the farm has a drive through store where you can buy fresh eggs that were collected the same morning.  Behind the store is a gate. Once you walk through the shoe cleaner and put on your booties (keeping both you and the chickens clean), the kids got to visit the chicks.

 These chicks were just a few weeks shy of moving into the big girl pens so they could start laying their own eggs.

 Farmer Billy let them pet one of the chicks. This is where we learned that brown chickens lay brown eggs and white chickens lay white eggs. Neither one is healthier than the other.  But brown eggs cost more because brown chickens are bigger and they eat more.

 After visiting the chicks we got to check out another pen and the kids filled up the chicken's trough with food.

 Then it was time for them to collect the eggs! Jack found one that was still warm!

The chickens have little pens with a "slide" and a ledge. Most of the time they hop up there to lay. How do you train a chicken to lay their eggs in a pen? Put golf balls where you want the eggs to end up and they'll figure it out ~ pretty smart!

We also got to see some eggs that did not have shells. The chicken may not have had enough calories to make a shell and the egg just has a membrane. They're all squishy and soft but totally the same inside. Farmer Billy says you can eat them, but I'll just take his word on that.

If the eggs are broken, he sells them to local bakeries. They use the eggs so quickly that it doesn't matter that they're cracked.

 Once the eggs are collected, they get washed, sorted and boxed. Here's Jack checking out the "car wash" part of the process.

 The eggs are sorted by size and boxed and sold. Different sizes have different prices.

This was seriously one of the best field trips ever! We had, fun learned a lot and had a lot of new experiences. And the eggs that we bought are delicious!