"The Chickens Gave Us Breakfast!"

I had one of those hunches that today might be the day that we would get our first egg, so when I got home from work I changed into egg hunting attire and went to check. I opened the nest box door (aka eggdoor - greetings we come from the planet eggdoor) and there it was - our first home grown egg.


It looks very similar to a store-bought egg, but there are a few differences. Not sure if you can tell in the picture, but it's not white - it's more of a buff color. It's a decent sized egg, but not quite as large as a large store-bought egg. The shell feels nice and firm, which is good. The shell has a few places that are sort of hard to describe - maybe shell undulations? In other words the surface isn't completely uniform.


I wanted Mr. O to find it so I called to him to get his boots on and come help me. He really got quite a thrill. He spotted it right away and picked it up with a look of joyful amazement. For a while I didn't think he'd let go of the thing. He wanted to feed the chickens too and we were afraid there were too many things in those little hands. We finally convinced him he could keep the egg in his shirt pocket while he fed the chickens old noodles and grapes. When we finally went inside he said, "the chickens gave us breakfast!"

The gals really like both the old noodles and the grapes. Mr. O loves to hand feed them. I'm very proud of how brave he is to let them peck stuff out of his little hands. Yesterday he held the grapes between his thumb and index finger and the birds took them eagerly. A couple times I think he got a finger pecked in the process but he was undeterred and insisted on more grapes, more grapes. (Don't worry - we're religious about washing hands after visiting the chickens.)


Here's a shot of Mr. O feeding Winnie a grape. That's Scout in the background patroling the coop perimeter and checking for leaks.



It's nice to see the gals settling into their new home - I like to think they're really enjoying themselves. The egg laying is certainly a sign of them making the adjustment, but other things are happening too. Coco and some of the pullets have started using the roost inside the hen box at night - Winnie has been using it for a while. Initially they slept on the straw bedding. Winnie is really starting to find her voice a bit. She was so quiet and shy at first but yesterday she was clucking away. I wonder if she laid the first egg - she was just much more lively yesterday. Maybe she just couldn't contain her pride.

For those keeping score at home - our first egg officially arrived on day 10 of chicken keeping.