We have our first egg! It's a good thing that Ed watches where he steps when he walks in the hen house, because there it was on the ground when he went out to feed and water the chickens this morning. One careless step and it would have been a scrambled egg!
Ed built the hens a nice nesting box up on a shelf last week. They like to sit there and relax, but it remains to be seen whether they will actually lay eggs in it. This egg was on the floor beneath the nesting box.
Of course, there's no way to know which hen produced the first egg. They were all hatched the same day, so they're the same age, but we have 4 different breeds of hens and they may mature at different rates.
We do know it wasn't Percy or Gonzo, our two roosters. We also know it wasn't one of our Easter Eggers--Buffy, Lucille, Kate, Maybelline, Nadia, or Cocoa--because Easter Eggers lay blue and green eggs, not brown.
Therefore, it had to be one of the four remaining hens: Prissy, Lacey, Crysta, or Sally. Ed and I are betting it's Miss Priss, the Barred Plymouth Rock (Percy's sister). She's always been the most precocious hen in the flock.
It's such a cute little egg, dwarfed by the large white eggs we buy from WalMart! All 4 breeds of our chickens are supposed to lay large or extra large eggs, so this bitty thing is slightly disappointing. But our hens are still young, not even 5 months old yet, so maybe they'll get better at it with time. Plus we only started giving them the "Egg Maker" feed last week.
It's just one teensy-weensy egg, but we hope it's the start of something great!
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