It took our hens a long time to start laying. Lucy was the first and the event was celebrated for days. We cleared a whole shelf in the fridge just for her ‘jumbo’ egg. There was certainly no question of which egg was laid when.

A few weeks later and Spacey and Lacy have caught up. It’s not unusual to get three eggs a day. Now we face the problem of stock rotation. Obviously we want to eat the oldest eggs first.

There’s some pretty cool egg skelters on the market but they’re expensive and don’t seem to have made the journey from UK to USA. So with a little bit of green inventing, I created this:

New eggs are placed at the top. Eggs to be eaten are removed from the bottom and the rest all slide down. I know it looks a little Blue Peter, but a few toilet rolls, tape and a wire coat hanger has become an efficient stock management system for my eggs!

I think when a plastic pipe turns up in the rubbish I’ll upgrade the system, but for now kitchen and toilet rolls will do the trick.