Hen fruit x 3!

Over the past week we've been getting more eggs! Our hens are starting to lay more and more, which is, as you know, completely and utterly fan-freekin'-tastic! Now both of our AustraWhites are laying everyday, one egg a day. One of our brown egg layers has been laying one nice, rosy brown egg a day and today...one more started laying! Whoever it was, I feel sorry for her. The egg was HUGE! OUCH! It had been broken by one of the hens stepping on it (it was in the middle of the coop floor, so understandable) and had a double yolk. Not something you see everyday! I'm thinking it is probably one of our partridge Brahma girls, but it may take some stakeout time to figure out exactly who is laying what. I'll keep ya posted. This is exciting!

My girls haven't let me down!

Lately, I've had the feeling these hens were holding out on me. I was nearly convinced they were stashing their eggs away in some secret nest and one day I'd find about 100 of them in some cubby-hole somewhere. Today I even reorganized our catch-all goat shed in hopes that I'd find something. The shed now looks 100% better, and I even discovered we have goat hay mangers & a couple of tiki torches stashed in there...but, alas, no eggs. The entire time those nosy hens were nonchalantly watching me, while casually scratching away at the ground 5 feet away. I thought I was onto something. One of our Rhode Island Red hens was looking very guilty yesterday when I walked by and saw her on the wood pile. Turns out, my paranoia was unjustified. Two more of our hens started laying today in the cow manger. When I went out to collect one egg I was surprised with 2 more - one brown speckled and one dove brown egg. Aren't they glorious?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Our hens would say it's the latter. Our Rooster, Mr. Roo (creative, I know), says it's downright awesome. A barnyard full of single ladies, and they're all his! My poor girls. He won't leave them alone. It's all crowing, chest beating (if he had a chest to beat, I'm certain he would, in a heartbeat) and mounting our hens. He's downright mean about it sometimes. Our hens will be missing their back feathers after a few months of this. Geesh. He is quite good at keeping the hens all within his line-of-sight. He is doing his job with keeping them in line and safe quite well. He escorts them into the coop at night, too. His vigilance actually came in handy the other day when a gigantic barn owl decided she wanted chicken dinner. No chickens were lost, and all were safely rounded up and escorted into their coop for the night. At least we'll get chicks out of it in the spring, but seriously. Our yard is now a chicken sex den. I guess it could be worse.

Hen fruit!

One of our hens FINALLY started laying - one of our AustraWhite girls. I was starting to get worried. We don't check the inside of their coop more than a couple of times a week, mostly just to check their big food trough. They are out from the morning when we open the coop, to dusk when the rooster shoos them all in for the night. The entire day they're roaming around our property eating bugs, seeds 'n grass to their little clucking delights! So, one night I opened the their coop to do a head-count, and WOWIE! 2 eggs sitting neatly on the floor bedding. The next day, nothing. She changed where she wanted to lay her eggs. I guess that's one of the downsides of having pastured, free-range hens. For over a week I looked and looked, only to find her hunkered down in the cow's manger, of all places. 8 eggs in her little straw nest! All of them were still good (there's a simple way of checking them that involves the egg, a cup of water and seeing whether it floats/doesn't float). She lays one egg a day and man...they are delicious! I feel rich eating these eggs. The yolks are so golden that it's almost a burnt golden orange color, instead of the supermarket yellow yolks. Definitely worth the wait! Now we're just waiting on our other hens to start laying! I saw one of the black star hens staking out a nest box today, so I'm thinkin' she's getting ready to start laying any day now. We really need all of them to get started on the laying...we go through A LOT of eggs here in our house. At least 3-6 a day. Come on girls, momma wants a quiche!