The eggs of our labor

The poop. The picking. The chicken bathing.

It's all led up to this moment:

Our first chicken egg! Laid by Roxie the Leghorn on Tuesday. I found it in the coop under the roosting bars on Tuesday afternoon, and from the way I whooped and danced a jig you'd have thought I laid an egg myself!

I brought it with me when I picked up the kids so I could show them, and then we took it to Zach's school so he could see, too. We were so darn excited about that egg!

You can see in the picture that it was slightly cracked. I don't know if it was laid while she was on the roosting bar and so it cracked when it hit the coop or if she stepped on it, but since it was cracked we elected not to eat it. I did crack it open and it looked like a perfect, tiny egg!

Then last night after dinner Kate was looking out the back window and declared that she thought there was an egg in the yard...and she was right! We all piled out to have a look, and there was a minutes-old egg that Roxie had laid! This one was bigger, but had a much thinner shell.

I made a video to show you just how thin the shell is and what the inside looks like.



Here are a few egg laying facts that I've learned over the past few weeks:

• Chickens will lay about one egg per day. The record is seven eggs in one day.
• It's common that the first eggs that a chicken lays are small with thin shells.
• It's common that the first eggs will have multiple yolks. The record is nine yolks in a single egg!
• Yes, the eggs do come out the same hole that poop comes out of, but they do not come down the same canal as poop -- so they aren't all yucky when they come out.
• You can teach a chicken to lay eggs in a coop by putting some golf balls there for a little while. (Looks like we're going to have to do that.)
• Fresh chicken eggs are still good for up to 21 days without having to be in a refrigerator. I'm not going to test that -- I plan to refrigerate.
• Since we don't have a rooster, these eggs will never become chicks, even if the hens lay on them.
• You have to be careful to collect eggs daily lest the hens become attached and want to sit on them, which is called getting "broody."

I did eat the double-yolked egg this morning. I had to add one store egg to make my usual two-eggs and kale breakfast, but the eggs were rich and creamy!

I have to admit that it was kind of weird to eat the egg, though. I know that the store eggs come from chickens, but there is something somewhat odd about going and collecting something that came out of an animal in your backyard and consuming it. I suppose it's not much different than harvesting the squash or tomatoes from the garden, but I'm just not quite wrapping my head around it yet. 

Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder what Roxie thinks about all this. She's the first one to lay eggs in the flock...is she the equivalent to the first girl in fifth grade to wear a bra or get her period? Are the Rhode Island Reds snickering behind her back about the eggs dropping out of her butt? Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the coop.

Changing chicken subjects, we do still have Polly the Picker. For the past two weeks she has been sentenced to solitary confinement, which really isn't confinement at all -- she gets free range of the yard while the others hang in the coop. If they are together, it has to be supervised to make sure she does not pick (or is dealt with accordingly if she does).

Zach read that spreading Vicks Vapor Rub on the picked chicken's behind would prevent picking, and as humiliating as it was to spread Vicks on a chicken butt, I'm pleased to report that it seems to have worked. Polly rubbed her beak on the ground something fierce when she got a beakful of that Vicks, and since then she has seemed to lay off a bit.

Last night before bed we knew that bad storms were on the way, and I knew that if Polly were to spend the night in her bin (her temporary coop) overnight, she'd be flung far and wide by the wind. So we made the tough decision to let her stay in the coop. I spread some extra Vicks on Roxie, and let her in.

Overnight I dreamed that when we let the chickens out of the coop the next day that Roxie stumbled out completely featherless.

Perhaps I'm a bit obsessed?

They were fine this morning. Seem to have weathered the storm just fine.

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