The Girls are Growing Up

The junior shepherdess is somewhat obsessed with poultry. OK, maybe not somewhat, more like totally. She is always telling me random facts about chickens. You probably remember when her mom, the shepherdess was trying to explain "chicken math" and one addend was a group of ten chickens that got into the truck after a trip to buy me hay at the local feed store. I don't know what got into the mind of that shepherdess but she went for a truckload of hay and came home with a truckload of chicks. "Just say NO, woman!" Well, the chicks are growing up and yesterday they decided to start laying eggs. I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see what the junior shepherdess found in the nesting box. Two small eggs nestled in with the normal sized eggs.

The first eggs of a pullet (ours are shown on the left in green and tan) are about 25% smaller than normal but they will slowly become larger.

All the hens were so proud. All of them kept singing for hours. The old hens won't admit it but they were strutting their stuff too. You could hear some of them boasting how they were the ones who taught the pullets how to lay their eggs in the next box. The Diva said, "Well, you know you have to have your tail feathers at a 73 degree angle to the edge of the nest box so that your egg is cushioned just right when it lands so it won't get cracked." Maybe that is another example for the term Mother Hen.