A Red Letter Day For Our Little Farmette!

 I opened the back hatch to the coop prepared to clean out several days of yuck, and perhaps find one brown egg, as I had already found two this morning. Much to my surprise and joy I spy a pretty blue egg as well as a brown one! My Daisy has finally come into her own, and can hang with the rest of the mother hens now, whoohoo!

Slow she and Bella have been, with us waiting still on Bella. I kept telling Nature Guy they would not be heading to the soup pot any time soon as I knew that they were a little behind on the uptake. Their combs hadn't popped until just this last week, which I've read was an indicator of their being mature enough to start laying. They won't have the regular combs the other girls do, just a pea comb, but they are such pretty birds. We officially hit a milestone, and got four eggs today.

I guess I'm officially a chicken nerd now. Our five hens have been so much fun to have around, and yes, there is some mess involved, but it's all good as they give back to us in eggs.

The Chickens That Flew the Coop

 Soooo.... my chickens are a bit spoiled in that they get to free range in the evening before bed time. Because of that they think they should be able to roam whenever and wherever they want. Add to that the fact that at least two of them are starting to lay eggs and you have a chicken revolt going on as they look for places to drop their eggs. They are always looking for ways to escape and or hoping I'm coming out to let them out. Yes, they have nesting boxes but that doesn't stop them from wanting to try and lay an egg behind the chest freezer in the garage, or the stack of bricks against the fence. My kind and helpful cousin brought us this much larger coop for the girls as I was plotting a bigger abode for them. The story behind the giveaway of this coop is best saved for another day.

I was getting things put away and happened to walk into the laundry room and spied Penny and Betsy on top of the coop. This is the second time I've caught them up there and I wanted to get a photo so I stepped out on the back porch only to have Penny fly straight toward me and land outside the pen. Betsy, who is still on the coop in the photo, followed suit immediately and they both came running up to me to see if I had a treat for them. Yes, these girls are spoiled. I was contemplating going to buy some sharp shears to clip their wings when it dawned on me that the ramp on the back of the coop is their launch pad to getting on top of the coop. What you don't see is that the other side of the coop roof is a lift top with corrigated tinted sun room plastic which they would never be able to get up on. So I've removed the ramp you see to prevent another escape. You have to give them credit, they are smart enough to plot an escape for sure.

Two of the three eggs I found this morning. The one on the right is called a jello egg as the shell is super soft. The other one was dropped by the feeder and was another jello egg, so this tells me they are starting to lay and trying to get it right. I might need to boost their calcium intake a bit, although Penny has been laying eggs for a month now and they are getting larger all the time.