Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Which came first - the chicken or the egg?? The chickens, by about 4-1/2 months

Exciting things going on here at the farm - we had our first eggs today!!! And what did I do with the first one?? Throw it at the rooster who tried to charge me of course.

I have been saying for days that surely we'd find an egg any day now and we should get the nests up. If you know anything about me/us, then you know that hasn't been done. I do tend to procrastinate....

The ducks are scared of everything, including the chickens so they tend to steer clear of them, never going near the chicken hut until most have gone in to roost. The last couple of days we've noticed the ducks going into the chicken hut. This evening I saw a duck sitting down in the dirt near the door, not near any other ducks and wondered what in the world it was doing there. Later I got my rubber boots on and went to investigate. Lo and behold - an egg. My first thought was that it was a chicken egg but this one was white and it should have been brown - what's that all about??? Dumb me - it took me a while to put two and two together and figure out that the duck I'd seen squatting there had laid the egg. I've never had a duck egg before so I was looking for something huge. It's a little longer than a chicken egg, but otherwise looks the same and the innards look the same too. I'm sure they'll get way bigger over time.

We found one tee-tiny pullet egg, nice and brown with a dark orange yolk. I swear it was like 1-1/2 inches! We had four duck eggs, one of which was a double-yolk. Pig-pig got them all because they were all laid in the mud & muck and not in nice clean nests.....

So guess who's putting in nests this weekend?