The Omlet Blog Category Archives: Pets

Hello,

Happy Valentine’s Day! We’re feeling positively romantic, so this week’s newsletter is full of love. There’s a woman that has a love of egg timers (over 2,500), some chickens that love their new rescue home and brilliant news about cats being good for the heart.

There’s other great news too: our Walk in Chicken Runs and Outdoor Cat Enclosures are now at a new direct-to-you price! Treat your pets to a spacious, safe, kingdom for as little as £299.99. Perfect for some springtime, fresh air frolicking. Your pets will love it! Pay less for exactly the same product and only available direct from Omlet.

The whole range is reduced, making a 2x2x2 (like the one pictured) £399 instead of £545, saving you a whopping £146. And extensions now start at £90.

Tiny Hamster Does Valentine’s Day

Do you remember the incredibly cute hot dog eating competition featuring Tiny Hamster? Just when you thought things couldn’t get any sweeter, he’s back again, starring in a Valentine video. This time he’s lucky enough to have a date to entertain, and, being the little gent that he is, he takes his hamster lady friend on a romantic boat ride followed by an italian dinner. (Think the ‘Lady and the Tramp’ meatball scene on a much smaller scale). We’re hoping that the Qute Hamster Cage will star in one of his scenes soon, but until then, make sure you watch this!

Thank you Hello Denizen for another highly entertaining video!

A M’egg’a Collection

Now this is a story of true love… Jolanda Nouwens started collecting egg timers 16 years ago, after her coin-collecting husband suggested she start her own collection rather than interfering with his. Unhappy with his rude comment, she decided to take revenge, by taking his advice. To an almighty scale! She started buying a few egg timers every week, until she’d covered every kitchen surface, and, surprisingly, he was happy for her, as it meant his coins were safe. On their 20th anniversary he even installed a circular display window, complete with engravings.

Since then, Jolanda’s passion for egg timers has grown to be even more powerful. She has over 2,500, meticulously displayed, and all working. Her husband cleans, repairs and repaints them. They search together for timers and she said “when they sell timers on the moon I am sure that we would order them”. What commitment! Her favourite timers are the six she recently bought from Omlet (or is she just being kind?)

Jolanda loves her egg timers. We have suggested she started collecting egg cups too, but we’re not sure her husband will approve!

 

Cats are Good for your Heart!

Great news for cat owners: your pet moggy is good for your heart! A rather unique study, published in 2009, studied the effect of cat ownership on over 14,000 people, for 20 years. The results revealed that both past and current cat owners were significantly more likely to survive a heart attack than those who had never owned cats.

Aside from that miracle research, it has been found that owning any pet can help you manage your blood pressure and lower your level of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. However, production of serotonin is increased when owning a pet, making you feel happy, and some therapists prescribe pets as a way of dealing with depression.

Whether cat, dog or chicken, your pet loves you unconditionally and will listen to all your worries, and, there’s no denying the humour they bring. What more could you need for a Valentine date?

When Marmite met Boiled Egg

After several claims that Marmite and boiled eggs are a match made in heaven we decided to put it to the test. Only someone with discerning tastebuds and an ability to differentiate between a just-laid and a day-old egg would do, so we asked breakfast critic Otto to sample the combination.

So, did he love it or hate it? Well, after watching the Marmite-drenched soldier inquisitively, cautiously dipping it into the runny yolk and popping it into his mouth, he gobbled the whole dish down in seconds. He reported: “The rich and savoury flavour of the Marmite toast was perfectly complemented by the sweet, gentle taste of the yolk – completely eggsquisite!” (Ok, maybe those weren’t his eggsact words, but he did smile!).

Over 2000 Hens Rehomed!

You might remember that last month we helped to spread the word about an upcoming Fresh Start for Hens re-homing day. The organisation were looking for homes for 2,000 chickens that were to be bought from farmers before meeting a premature end. Well, we’re pleased to report that it was a success! There was such an interest that they rehomed more than they had originally planned to – 2,680 in total.

Eunice, a volunteer at Fresh Start, has rehomed quite a number of girls herself over the years, and they have been treated to lots of TLC, living in Eglu Cubes. She also has a small pen with Bantams and disabled chickens that live in an Eglu Go and Classic, so they have no steps to climb. What a woman!

Tweet of the Week

The kids at St Thomas C of E are crazy about their new additions! There have been letters pleading to be chicken monitors, and even a YouTube video. It would appear that their dinner lady is just as happy too!

They tweeted: “Wow! 6 eggs, Miss Mandy is very excited to use them in the school meals.”

Omelettes all round then, Miss Mandy?

Follow us on Twitter and keep us up to date with your own eggciting news!

Pink Products to Love!

Egg Skelter – Keep your eggs in date order so you always use the oldest one first. Only £19.99

Eglu Classic – The prettiest palace for chickens to sleep in. Looks the part and it’s easy to clean! From £314.99

Sparrow Keyring Duo – Complete in house, so you both always know where your keys are! Just £15.95

Breakfast Week has Almost Arrived!

Don’t you just love Sunday mornings? Curling up for an eggstra hour or two in bed, reading the papers with a cup of coffee and indulging in a delicious breakfast. Bliss! And this Sunday is an especially tasty date to get in the diary as it is the start of Breakfast Week. Everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but what is it that makes it so vital?

Breakfast feeds the body and brain after an overnight fast. (Breakfast really is breaking the fast.) It restores glucose levels, needed for memory and concentration, and filling up on something nutritious means you are less likely to crave naughty mid-morning snacks.

So be it a bowl of creamy porridge, some boiled eggs and soldiers or a full cooked breakfast, make sure you start each day with something nutritious and delicious. You might even want to try our favourite – the Omlet Omelette! Send us a photo of your breakfast for a chance to win a £50 voucher. Email us, post on our Facebook page or send us a Tweet by Saturday 31st January.

Fighting the Freeze

Brrr, it’s been a chilly month so far, and you’ve been sharing your pictures of Eglus-turned-Igloos, snow capped chicken coops and hens sporting tweed jackets. If you keep chickens, the good news is you don’t need to panic about the freezing temperatures. Being hardy creatures, your hens will be perfectly happy during Winter, if you follow our top tips:

• Remember to shut your hens in the Eglu when it gets dark and open again in the morning. There’ll be nice and cosy thanks to the twin-walled insulation.
• Ensure their drinkers are full of fresh water every day. Investing in a spare drinker will make it easier to swap frozen for fresh, or you could try using a water heater.
• Consider moving the coop to a sheltered part of the garden, away from prevailing wind. If this isn’t possible make sure you have suitable run covers (currently 25% off).
• Your hens will eat more than usual to stay warm, meaning an increase in number of droppings. Clean the coop out more often than usual and make sure you pick up the frozen droppings every couple of days.
• For a warming treat, pour boiling water over feed pellets, stir, and allow to cool. Try adding a touch of poultry spice and you’ve got a pre-bedtime porridge.
• Although your hens will be warm in their Eglu, you can invest in an Extreme Temperature Jacket if you want to give them extra warmth during extremely cold weather.

Barbara’s Latest Adventure

Poor Barbara has had quite an ordeal this week. She left Omlet HQ on Wednesday morning for an eggsibition in Paris, and the poor girl was cooped up in the van for 24 hours. It was a nightmare of a journey, with nothing to do during the traffic jams than hopped out to perform the chicken dance to stretch her wings. After having to roost in the van overnight, with nothing but a bag of popcorn to peck at, she was quite alarmed to be woken by police sniffer dogs, checking that there was nothing suspicious in her nest. Quite eggsausted, Barbara finally arrived for the Maison & Objet show, where she had just hours to set up the Omlet stand ready for its opening today.

Should you be visiting this trade show, please do go and check up on Barbara for us, and perhaps take her a mealworm or two for an energy boost. She’s a good old bird!

 

Omlet in Australia

We’re eggstremely thrilled to announce the arrival of Omlet Australia. We’ve scooted a selection of our most popular products over to the other side of the world to make chicken keeping easy and fun for everyone. Choose from the Eglu Go, Go UP and Walk in Chicken Run, or, if you prefer fur to feathers, the Eglu Go Hutch is also available. (Luckily the Eglus work just as brilliantly upside down.)

Omlet Australia will be eggsibiting at the Bungedore Show, in New South Wales, on Sunday. Should you live in the area and fancy popping along why not go and say hello to Lara. Lara has recently moved back to Australia to look after the business and she’ll be able to help you with any orders or questions. Based in Mosman, her favourite animal is a cat (preferably with silky fur) and she likes her eggs poached, on toast.

So, now that you know a bit about her, why not check out the Omlet Australia website!

Tweet of the Week

The kids at Ysgol Esgob Morgan School in Cardiff assembled three new Eglu Cubes this week. Well…it’s all in a day’s work for RHS School’s Gardening Team of the Year!

They tweeted: We love te @omlet chicken houses … And so do the chicks!

We don’t doubt that both kids and chickens are going to henjoy this eggsperience and we wish them lots of luck!

Follow us on Twitter and keep us up to date with your own eggciting news!

Beat the Winter Chill!

Extreme Temperature Jacket for Eglu Classic – An insulated jacket to keep your hens as warm as possible during the deep freeze. Lined with Flectalon, a material developed by NASA to keep astronauts warm on missions.

Keep hens cosy for £49

Snugglesafe Microwave Heatpad – Microwave this gadget for a few minutes and it will provide up to 10 hours of warmth. Pop it in your Eglu to give chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs a cosy place to sleep.

A toasty night’s sleep for £17.25

Insulating Water Bottle Cover – Suitable for use with the drinking bottle supplied with the Rabbit Eglu, this will help to regulate water temperature all year. Protecting it from sunlight will also reduce growth of Algae.

Prevent freezing water bottles for £4.95

Can’t remember which clementines you bought last week and which ones were fresh this week? A Fruit Skelter takes the guesswork out of your fruit’s age. By topping up your Fruit Skelter from the back and taking it from the front, you’ll always eat your fruit in date order. Happy days!

How do you store your bananas? Keep them in a bowl and they’ll bruise, keep them in contact with other fruit and they’ll over-ripen. A Fruit Skelter offers the solution. Attach the removable hook to hang your bunch and not only will you save space but your bananas will ripen evenly.

Do your pesky pears squash your soft satsumas? Layering all your different fruits in one basket is always going to cause chaos. A Fruit Skelter prevents these disasters by making your fruit queue up in an orderly fashion and behave sensibly. Those Braeburn bullies won’t push their weight around anymore.

The Fruit Skelter looks magnificent in any home, creating a mouth-watering visual spectacle. Keep it topped up and the spiralling edible rainbow may even encourage you to eat more fruit, helping towards a healthy and happy lifestyle.

Free Delivery on Fruit Skelters throughout January with promo code: FEELINFRUITY

This offer is valid in the UK only, from 19th to 31st January 2015.

Good morning and happy World Egg Day!

If you keep chickens you probably like eggs, and fresh eggs from your own hens are so tasty that they’re worth celebrating every day. But today is eggstra special. Today the whole world unites in honour of the humble egg. No matter where you live or what time of the day it is, a simple egg can be the source of a cheap, nutritious and delicious dish.

From cakes to meringues to a poached egg on toast, eggs are both a key ingredient and a star of the show. We love them. You love them. So make sure you celebrate World Egg Day with one eggstraordinary breakfast.

But before you do….

The Great Give-a-Weigh

Since starting out in 2004 Omlet have delivered thousands of Eglus and an awful lot of chickens. Laying an average of six eggs a week, we’ve calculated that our hens have laid over 30 million eggs over the last decade. That’s one heck of an omelette! As you can imagine, with all this eggsperience, we’ve seen eggs of all shapes, colours and sizes, but today we are on the hunt for something eggstra special… will you help us find the heaviest egg laid on World Egg Day?

We’ve teamed up with our friends at the British Hen Welfare Trust to launch a cracking competition to celebrate World Egg Day. We call it The Great Give-a-Weigh, and it works a little something like this. When you collect your eggs this morning, weigh each one before poaching, boiling or frying. Take a photo of the egg on the scales, showing the weight, and send it to us. (The photo, not the egg!) We will convert the weight of the heaviest egg laid today from grams into pounds and donate it to the BHWT, and the owner of that winning egg will be treated to a goody bag full of eggcellent Omlet treats.

Email your photo, post on our Facebook page or send us a tweet, by midnight tonight. And then feel free to rustle up your delicious World Egg Day breakfast! (You can send us a photo of that too, if you want to make us hungry.)

Delicious Eggs Deserve to be on Display

World Egg Day is the perfect day to assess your egg storage. If you keep chickens the likelihood is you have a lot of eggs, and it can be difficult keeping track of how old they are. Some people like writing the dates on, some try storing them in piles of egg boxes, and others go for the easy option of using an Egg Ramp.

Simple and stylish, the Egg Ramp will solve your egg storage problems. No need to date your eggs, just add fresh eggs to the back of the queue and take them from the front. As you remove an egg, the others will roll forward, leaving space for the next eggs to be added. It stores a dozen eggs and you’ll always use the oldest eggs first, ensuring you never waste one again. This eggcessory looks great too. It takes up little space on the kitchen worktop, comes in four classy colours and, made from melamine, you’ll find it quick and easy to clean.

Choose your favourite colour and buy your Egg Ramp today for only £14.99

Beware when Finishing your Boiled Eggs

What do you do with your eggshell when you’ve finished your boiled egg? Estell Makin sent us this old tale:

Never leave your eggshell unbroken in the cup

Think of us poor sailor folk and always smash them up

For witches come and find them and sail away to sea

And make the life a misery for fishermen like me

You have been warned!

Cook up an Egg Custard

Why not celebrate World Egg Day with a sweet treat? This gorgeous recipe for a glorious Egg Custard comes from last year’s Great Omlet Bake Off entrant Kevin Harris. Simply delicious!

Ingredients

For the pastry:
8oz plain flour
4oz butter/margerine
Few spoons cold water

For the custard:
300ml milk
300 ml double cream
140g caster sugar
4 gorgeous chicken eggs
Vanilla essence
Ground nutmeg

Method

1) Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingers until butter is incorporated
2) Stir in a small amount of water until the mixture binds together
3) Chill in the fridge for 15 mins
4) Roll out thinly and line a loose bottom flan tin
5) Put some baking paper cut into a circle inside the case and some baking beans and bake in oven at 170 degrees(fan oven) for 25 minutes, removing baking beans for last 5 mins.
6) Remove to cool and turn oven down to 130 degrees (fan oven)
7) Heat the cream and milk in a saucepan with few drops of vanilla essence
8) Meanwhile hand whisk the caster sugar with the eggs in a large bowl
9) When the cream begins to boil hand whisk it immediately into the egg mix
10) Sieve this mixture into a jug then pour into the pastry case and sprinkle over the nutmeg
11) Bake for approx. 1 hour, turning around half way through cookin
12) Remove from oven, leave to set and trim the pastry

Hello,Can you believe it’s been a decade since Omlet began? The Eglu Classic was launched back in 2004, by four friends who met while studying at the Royal College of Art. 10 years on and (between you and me) they may be looking a little older and more worn, but the Eglu remains as fresh and funky as ever. Since sparking a sensation in urban chicken keeping, Omlet have delivered Eglus to households across Europe and America, and introduced thousands of families to the joy of keeping hens and the taste of freshly laid eggs. We hope you’ve henjoyed the journey as much as we have, and we’d like to eggspress our thanks for being such a fantastic bunch!

With Easter just around the corner and with a 10 year anniversary to celebrate, we’re eggstraordinarily eggcited to be able to finally unveil some cracking new products that we’ve been keeping quiet about. Plus, find out about the competition that will have you mistaking us for Willy Wonka… (There’s also a little secret eggstra hidden at the end of this email. Shhhh.)

Yellow Eglu Classics Back in Business!

What do Eglus, custard and daffodils have in common? They’re all yellow! That’s right, the yellow Eglu Classic is back with a bang, and looking better than ever before. It’s been a long time since we saw our old friend, and we’ve missed the bright and sunny shade of chicken coop, so, what better way to celebrate Omlet’s 10 year anniversary than by bringing back this cracking colour, and reuniting the original Eglu traffic light trio!? At long last the Green, Red and Yellow Eglus can nest in harmony and house lots of happy chickens.

Spring is the perfect time to start keeping chickens, and there’s nothing more Spring-like than a bloomin’ beautiful yellow Eglu. You’ll be collecting fresh eggs in time for Easter (and that beats chocolate for sure). Order yours today and you could start your dream of keeping hens with just the cluck of a button!

Brand New Eglu Egg Cup Now Available to Pre-Order

To celebrate 10 years of the Eglu Classic, we are eggstatic to unveil a new coop. It may be smaller than our other chicken houses, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in absolute all-round awesomeness. Introducing the Eglu Egg Cup – a miniature replica of the original Eglu Classic, for your boiled egg!

It’s cute, it’s cool, it’s iconic: the 2014 must-have breakfast eggcessory to add to your collection. (Please note, Omlet can not be held liable for any crockery kerfuffle caused by egg cup envy.) An 1/8th scale replica of the Eglu Classic, this may be too small to keep real chickens, but it is the perfect size to nest a beautiful boiled egg. Available as an Egg Cup, or as a Breakfast Set complete with toast rack run and salt and Miss Pepperpots, this is undoubtedly the only egg coop of its kind, and with five colours, you can choose one to match your real Eglu.

The Eglu has been eggsibited all over the world and now you can display a little piece of design history right in your kitchen. Perfect for enjoying the simple pleasure of eating a boiled egg in style!

Pre-Order your Eglu Egg Cup for £9.99 or your Eglu Egg Cup Breakfast Set for £19.99!

Join in Omlet’s Great Golden Egg Hunt & Win Your Breakfast!

Thought that was all eggciting enough? Well the fun doesn’t stop there. Spreading a bit of Willy Wonka magic, we have hidden 100 golden eggs in the first 1000 Eglu Egg Cups and Breakfast Sets, each relating to a breakfastastic prize. Will you be the lucky winner of a real Eglu Classic Chicken House and be treated to fresh eggs for breakfast every day? Maybe you’ll win a jar of delicious marmalade to spread on your toast? Or you might get your mitts on a lovely loaf of seeded bread to henjoy with your boiled egg. There are lots of other speggtacular prizes on offer too, and you’ve got a 1 in 10 chance of winning with every Eglu Egg Cup. So what are you waiting for?

Pre-Order your Egg Cups now to join in Omlet’s Great Golden Egg Hunt!

Celebrate with a Cuppa!

10 years of Omlet!? This calls for a celebration, so why not raise a toast to the Eglu Classic with our special edition anniversary mug. Whether you opt for a quintessentially English breakfast tea, or a generous helping something fizzier, enjoy a celebratory cuppa with us! Complete with a snazzy graphic of the original Eglu Classic and a quote from the first Eglu article, featured in The Times in April 2004, this is the perfect memento for Eglu owners and Omlet fans all round.

Prefer to celebrate with a spot of shopping? Spoil yourself with a new pair of shoes, a glitzy frock or a bottle of champers, and use our stylish matching bag to carry your goodies home. Funky and sustainable, it’s a great eggscuse to treat yourself.

Order your Omlet 10 Year Anniversary Special Edition Mug and Bag today!

Pssst. Want to see the faces behind the Eglu design? Taken on their first day at Omlet HQ, this is the photo they didn’t want you to see…