The Chicken Chronicles III: Our First Eggs

Since I last wrote about our little chickies, all sorts of progress has been made towards the reason we raised them up.

Unfortunately, we did end up loosing one to an unknown issue.  The odd thing about the loss of this particular chicken is that she was the dominant one from the beginning, she was the only one that was a different color than her sisters, she was the friendliest, and she was the prettiest of them all...  She had the most lovely silver and black feathers that were purple and green edged in the sunlight.  One day she seemed depressed, and then her tail feathers fell out, and then one day she "went to the farm upstate."  Oh well.  I bet she would have laid a tasty egg...

Aside from loosing the one hen, everything else is going very well.  After a few initial hiccups (laying outside the nest, laying eggs without shells, laying eggs while sitting on the roost so they drop more than a foot), things seem to be going smoothly.  It appears that the first couple of eggs a chicken lays have a few issues, either logistically or with their development, but by the time egg number four or five comes out, the girls seem to get the hang of it.  I have to say though, it is very amusing how after they lay their first egg, they seem startled, and then strut around all special-like. 

Today was our most productive egg day so far, with five of the nine chickens coming on line.  Some of the eggs weren't keepers, but it's a sign that we will be flush with eggs very soon.  The first eggs that some of them are laying are just the sweetest little things ever...about half the size of a regular large AA egg, they're just darling.  And Stumpy, the hen that we had to quarantine with leg problems, lays the cutest eggs of all.  She's a bit smaller than the other chickens and lays proportionally petite eggs.