An Eclectic Mind

We [finally] do!

Well, those chickens finally started laying eggs. How nice of them to do it on Easter Sunday!

I found the first two eggs in the coop this evening when we went down to feed the horses. One, in the nest, was in perfect condition. The other, on the floor of the coop, was broken and had to be thrown away.

I’m not surprised about the one on the floor. After all, imagine that you’re a chicken, minding your own business day after day for the first four or five months of your life. One day, you feel a little weird. You squat down, have a nasty little pain in your rear end, and — voila! There’s an egg where you squatted! Well that looks almost just like the golf ball in the wooden thing with all the cosy wood shavings. Maybe that’s where you should go next time you start feeling like you need to drop one of these things. So they learn to lay their eggs in the nests.

These first two eggs were both small. In the photo, my chicken’s egg is on the right and a store-bought Grade A Extra Large egg is on the left. I expect them to get larger over time. In about a month, they should be full size, somewhere between Large and Extra Large.

They’re also green. Yes, green. I bought Araucana chickens, which lay colored eggs. They’re sometimes called the Easter Egg chickens and it just happens to be a coincidence that the first eggs they laid appeared on Easter Sunday.

I expect that all nine hens will be laying by the end of this week. The estimated production is 6-8 eggs per day. I’ve been saving egg cartons and will soon be giving out eggs to anyone who comes to the door.

After all, how many eggs do you think Mike, Jack the Dog, Alex the Bird, and I can eat?