Eggs!

I have been mocking the chickens behind their backs for months now. They should have started laying in late August or September, but there were no eggs in sight. We would search the yard, seeing if they had just laid them somewhere else than their coop, but no. People would often ask about how they are doing and I was embarrassed to admit that they had failed in their primary purpose.

Finally after looking on the web and talking to other chicken minded people (bird brains?) I decided that perhaps they should be old enough to lay, but that the hours of daylight, temperature, blah blah blah let's wait and see what they do in the spring.

Then comes late November, and we get Tashi the Wonder Pup. After letting her run in the yard with the chickens a bit, and then catching her grabbing Gertie's tail and thinking Tashi had killed her, I put a stop to their sharing the yard at the same time. Now mostly the chickens stay in the coop and run, and Tashi gets the yard. If I know we are going to be gone for a number of hours with Tashi inside in her crate, I will let the chickens out to roam.

I swear not more than three weeks after getting the dog, suddenly the chickens are laying eggs. First Gertie, then Maybelle. Its as if keeping them cooped up is helping them to lay eggs. Perhaps they aren't burning as many calories running around the yard, or maybe they are not filling up on grass and rocks and are instead eating way more of their chicken pellets? Totally crazy, but there you have it. If you are wondering how I know who is laying what, it is an assumption I have made based on the color of the chickens' ears. I read that the color of their ears (a little unfeathered spot where you would think their ears would be) is the color of the eggs they lay, and I have always admired Gertie's bluish-green ear spots. Maybelle's eggs followed about a week and a half later, and are the nicest off white (my sister mockingly pointed out that one might call that color "eggshell white"). I also read that the color egg a chicken lays is the same color she was born in. I find a very lovely symmetry in that. I can't seem to take a picture that quite captures the true color of the eggs, but I put a store bought egg on the right in the photo above for comparison.

It is so nice to have backyard eggs. They do indeed taste fresher and more "real," and DaVinci loves going out to collect the eggs and is super cute as a farm girl. And Z is just happy that two of our animals are finally earning their keep. (Just wait until I give him the cat/dog hair sweater for his birthday!)