EGG-MAZING NEWS!!

Guess what happened!

Sunshine the chicken...

...made this!!! It finally happened. One of our chickens laid an egg.  Well, actually she's laid many eggs. We just didn't know until very recently. Let me tell you the story of how we discovered this amazing feat of chickendom (whatever that means) while I also pepper the post with pictures I took of the very exciting moments right after we found Sunshine's cache of eggs. 

I had noticed that a few days this week Sunshine had not been scooting around the yard in the morning with her sisters. She was absent from all the scratching, pecking, and pooping that normally occurs. She is 21 weeks old and that's prime time for her breed to start laying, so I was on red alert for any suspicious behavior. Vivian and I decided to venture out and see if we could locate Sunshine. 

We looked by her "sleeping tree" and she wasn't there. I was calling her name and after a minute I heard a soft cooing from over by the house. We looked that direction and spotted her hunkered down in a patch of dry dirt up against the house, under the shade of a substantial weed. As we approached her she squawked at us indignantly for disturbing her private time, then got up and ran off around the house toward the other chickens. 

My heart was drumming as I approached the dirt patch. Could this be it? Could this be the moment we've all been waiting for? 

YES!!! And there wasn't just one egg, there were SIX perfect little brown eggs. She'd been at it for almost an entire week already! Vivian desperately wanted to hold one, of course, and she promptly smashed it in her little pudgy fist, which was followed immediately by a brief but intense bout of bawling (she cried, not me) but we fixed her up with another egg and she was good to go. 

HOORAY!! It was very exciting, let me tell you. One minor complication is that since our chickens have gone FERAL and no longer sleep in or associate with the coop at all, they won't lay their eggs in there either. So we now have to hunt the yard daily for secret laying spots. I just so happen to LOVE Easter egg hunts, so this is no hardship to be honest. I don't think the other four are laying yet, but it's only a matter of time. 

Who knows? Maybe the chickens will all take turns laying eggs in Sunshine's dirt patch. That would be most convenient. But the chickens have never been known to do anything that makes my life easier, and I don't expect them to start now. I'll worry about that later. Right now I'm happy!! I get to go out to the dirt patch every night looking for a little perfect brown egg. It's the simple things in life. 

I'll leave you with this picture of Tom Selleck at Niagara Falls with a club sandwich because it too makes me happy. And fear not, I'll be posting more info about the chickens and their egg laying status in the near future. Have an EGGTASTIC day! 

xoxo

HUEVO LOVER SUPREMO

Sleeping Arrangements

Hey Chickadees! What's going down in chicken town? Wait, only I live there (in my mind). I hope you have all been well. The chickens and I have been missing you all big time. So here we are with a fresh new blog entry for your reading enjoyment. Today we shall be discussing the chicken sleeping situation. Chickens roost when they sleep, and they like to be as high as they can get while roosting. Observe...

I found this picture on The Google. These chickens are on a roosting pole inside their coop. That is where good, normally behaving chickens should sleep. Do MY chickens do this? Let's see, shall we? 

So I went into the backyard to feed and water the hens one night and I noticed that the chickens didn't come a running when they saw me approaching with vittles, like they normally do. I could HEAR them, but I couldn't see them. Then I noticed a white blob up in the tree near their coop, and near that was a black blob, another black blob, and a reddish blob. I moved a bit closer...

 They were in a tree fifteen feet off the ground. Of course. 

 Here's a nice shot of their fluffy bird butts from underneath the tree. They all looked quite pleased with themselves for having made it up there. 

Look at Sunshine. She's practically crowing with pride. I hope she doesn't actually crow because that would make her a rooster and roosters are feathery noise demons. And egg fertilizers. You'll notice also that there are only four of them. Where is Clucky?

She was on the ground and while I was watching she managed to make it onto a lower branch of the tree while the other chickens watched from above and snickered oh so rudely. She made it into the crux of the tree but then took an unfortunate tumble back to earth. Poor Clucky! 

Don't worry. I was right there to console her and give her a pep talk. Once that was done we ate some grapes and tossed a couple of pine cones at the other chickens for revenge. Then I tossed her up into the tree and there she stayed...until the morning. 

So there you have it. My hens prefer sleeping in a tree rather than the coop we made for them. SO I'm going to start working on the bigger, more luxurious coop that they will be spending the winter in. I'm determined to make them LOVE it and want to be in it all the time. Does Pottery Barn make nesting boxes? I'll look into it. At the very least I'll have some afghans in there, and scented candles, and copies of Mother Earth News and People. 

Take it easy Peeps!! 

xoxo