OH! OH! OH! LOOK WHAT I GOT!!

[Deleted]

MY FIRST EGG!!



My very first little brown egg! I'm SO excited!!

Rich found it out behind the coop where the chickens lay in the shade. It was so little he thought it was a rock at first! LOL! Now I wonder if whoever laid this will figure out to leave her eggs in one of the nest boxes, or if I'll be picking them up from the ground behind the coop all the time...

Oh, I don't care! I got my first EGG! Woohoooo! ;D

~Lannie

[Kathy]

Aww that's a cute little egg! Isn't it funny how something so tiny and common can make a chicken owners day?

I like the little speckles on the shell. They're already colored & decorated for Oestra

[dirty]

congratulations i can't wait to get chickens again.

[bergere]

Congrats Lannie! Is always fun finding eggs.
So are you going to eat it? ;D

[bbird]

How cool is that! I can imagine your happiness. The very first time we found our first egg brings back fond memories. Ds went into the coop and starting yelling and dh and I took off on a run. There he was proudly holding up a small blue egg. Dh and I started clapping. I mean really clapping like when your child hits their first home run! When it was all over and we calmed down we both looked at each other and busted out laughing about how ridiculous we both probably looked. We didn't care though because we got our first egg, lol.

Pretty soon you will have so many eggs you won't know what to do with them all.

[Deleted]

Woo Hoooo!!!! isn't it exciting?!?!

[Deleted]

Sorry I didn't get on here yesterday - we were shopping all day and by the time we got home we were totally exhausted!

But last night I found another tiny egg, and it was actually in one of the nest boxes. So I thought "Hooray, she figured it out!" Then just a little while ago, I went out to see if there were any more, and although the 3 lower nest boxes had been disturbed, there were no eggs. So I went outside and found two more (so more than one pullet is laying, apparently), but they'd been stepped on and cracked.

I hope they all figure out to use the nest boxes. The two cracked ones I gave to the dogs. Oh, the COLOR of those yolks! They're practically orange!

By the way, I ATE the first one for breakfast yesterday morning! (Rich was giving me a hard time for eating my "grandchild!") It was an absolutely perfect little egg, and very tasty, too. ;D

~Lannie

[Kathy]

Lannie, put a wooden egg or even a little plastic one in the nestboxes. I've even used a small plastic ball that I got in the toy section of the Dollar Tree.
Hens seem to want to 'outdo' their roost mates and normally will lay where there's already an egg. Nothing like some healthy competition to teach them where to leave your daily presents.

[Deleted]

Oh, I forgot about that! LOL! I get a little excited and stuff falls out my ears, I guess.

I'm fresh out of plastic or wooden eggs, though. Ya think a golf ball will work? I have plenty of those. It doesn't have to be brown, does it? Do they know what color the other hens' eggs would be? I could spray paint one tan, I guess, if it matters.

~Lannie

[Deleted]

Well I just took two white "eggs" (Titleist brand!) out to the nest boxes, and found another egg! IN the nest box, so now I have 3 that are laying. The two this morning that I found outside were laid somewhere between 7:00 and 11:00, and this last one was so fresh it was still warm, so I guess about 4:00. Is it true that they lay about an hour later each day until it gets so that it's dark, then they skip a night and start again in the morning? I think I heard that somewhere...

Anyway, I hope the Titleist eggs work! ;D

~Lannie

[Kathy]

Well my pullets were sort of snobby and preferred the Nike brand eggs. They were such logo snobs! ;D

It sounds like by the time the snow flies you'll be getting a nice batch of eggs daily. I'm so jealous; my store eggs are so pale while you're enjoying those bright orange yolks.
Enjoy them, you sure worked hard in this summers heat to get things set up.

[Deleted]

Hmmmm.... they seem not to be sure whether they like my "eggs" or not. I've only found two in the nest box with the golf balls, and several more just on the floor in the coop.

Also, is it normal for them to stop and start when they first start laying? Probably is, but I thought I'd ask. I was getting at least one nice egg every day, then several days went by when there was nothing. Then I found one that only had 3/4 of the shell formed (I was expecting one of those at some point), and then yesterday morning and today, I've had a nice, perfect, clean egg. Yesterday it was on the floor, today it was up in the nest box.

I thought maybe there were a couple of them laying, but maybe it's just one...

I also seem to have made a very good friend. One of the girls has been spending a LOT of time with me lately. She follows me like a puppy when I'm out in the coop or run, and if I sit on the step, she wants in my lap. She actually asks me to pick her up if I'm standing, and if I'm sitting, she just hops into my lap. Then she just snuggles down and she'll stay there until I have to get up. She's not begging for food, in fact, this morning I took out some whey from the cheese I made yesterday, and she passed it up in order to come sit in my lap. So, now I call her Snuggle-Chicken. ;D

~Lannie

[dirty]

lannie said:

Well I just took two white "eggs" (Titleist brand!) out to the nest boxes, and found another egg! IN the nest box, so now I have 3 that are laying. The two this morning that I found outside were laid somewhere between 7:00 and 11:00, and this last one was so fresh it was still warm, so I guess about 4:00. Is it true that they lay about an hour later each day until it gets so that it's dark, then they skip a night and start again in the morning? I think I heard that somewhere...

Anyway, I hope the Titleist eggs work! ;D

~Lannie

my chickens aways laid their eggs between 8am and 12noon.

[Deleted]

They did? Maybe mine will settle down to a normal routine after a while. Right now I'm finding them at all hours, but it's usually only one a day. Yesterday morning, there was a fresh (warm) egg waiting for me when I let them out at 6:00 am. Then nothing for the rest of the day. A few days ago, I found 3, all between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm, but that was the only multiple-egg day. Two of them were right next to each other, outside, and both were broken because apparently someone had been dancing on them or something (the water fount was knocked over, too). Oh, well.

I must be patient, I must be patient, I MUST BE PATIENT!

~Lannie

[bbird]

Ours lay between 10 and noon, but that is also the time the sun finally hits their coop. It's kind of funny but when we had hundred's of chickens the laying would start which signaled all the other hens to lay so for that first hour it sure got noisy. Now with just a little amount of chickens I can just tell by the noise they make that they just laid an egg and go out and get it.

The chickens will get more reliable after awhile, it seems when they first start they might skip a day here and there. Then when winter comes it might even slow down more depending on how cold it gets and the amount of daylight, but watch out for next spring you are going to have some major egg producers!! ;D

You might miss some eggs too if you have any egg eaters in the group. Sometimes you won't catch any evidence that they ate the whole egg so you might try going in the coop at different times and seeing what is going on...We've had to do this and we would catch the guilty party with yolk on its beak, lol...well not really but we would scare it away from eating an egg and see the evidence.

My dh is in the habit of coming home and he sits in his car and throws out the leftovers from his lunch. We know when he arrives at the gate even though we can't see or hear him because the chickens take off running to where he parks the car to wait for him. He hardly gets the car stopped and they are flying at the car, even jumping up on the hood of his car. It's really cute to see because the chickens crowd out the dogs who want their petting.

[Deleted]

I go out at least once every hour! Hoping to find more eggs, you see.

I haven't figured out the "I just laid an egg" sound, I guess. They're always making some kind of noise. I just haven't noticed it yet, but I will in time. I definitely know the "ACK! Rooster's got my head!" noise.

I thought about the egg-eating, but I don't think that's happening right now. If they were going to, I'd think that the two broken ones or the one with only a partial shell would have been the catalyst, but no one had bothered them. The broken ones weren't broken enough for the insides to come out, they were just really badly cracked and dented (good membranes, I guess).

I know what you mean about being mobbed by chickens. They all crowd up against the fence in the run as soon as they see the back door open. Yesterday evening, some neighbors stopped by to get some plums and all the chickens were piled up against the fence when the car drove up, thinking that here were some more HOOMANS who might have food! LOL! Sometimes I'm not sure whether I have chickens or pigs...

~Lannie

[Deleted]

Well, this is weird. Shortly after my last post, I went out to feed the horses their lunch, so of course, I stopped in to check the chickens on my way by. One of them was sitting in a nest box, so I came back when I was done feeding to watch and see if anything happened. She sat there for a long time, completely silent, then stood up, looked like she was pushing, and dropped an egg. Not a sound, except the clunk when the egg hit the bottom of the nest box (she'd scootched all the hay aside). Then she looked upside down at her egg (you get the picture!), and hopped down and went back outside. Not a word from her.

So I took the egg in the house and came back out to check on the horses, when I noticed ANOTHER egg just sitting on the floor of the coop just inside the big door. Two of the girls were giving it some strange looks (maybe one of them laid it), so I picked it up and it was very warm. Now that's 3 eggs again today, but no noise on the one I sat and watched, and I don't think any noise on the second one. I was outside again in just a couple of minutes but I didn't hear anything at all.

Maybe they don't know those things are eggs yet? Maybe when they realize those are their "kids" they'll announce it? Or could I just have really quiet and uninterested chickens?

So the timing today was one egg around 11:00-ish (not sure exactly), one at 3:00 and one at 3:05. Pretty soon I'll have a dozen! LOL!

~Lannie

[bergere]

Boy you are lucky. Mine announce to the world, they lay eggs.
And they are quiet compared to many chicken breeds.
Like they say.."hello world.. I laid an egg,, come eat it...hay ..come eat me too!!" Sigh ~ ~

For egg eaters.. you need to find out the offenders quickly and they will need to be culled.
Other wise if they get up to full speed you will rarely get eggs for you to eat.
Haven't found a trick yet..that can get them to stop.

[Deleted]

Nope, no egg eaters yet.

They have started making a different sound sometimes, though, and I guess it means "I'm ABOUT to lay an egg." Because when I hear it I go out there, but there are no eggs, then 15 minutes later, there'll be some. The hens make a funny loud croaking sound and the roosters say "BugACK!" really loud. There was quite a racket of those sounds about an hour ago, so I bolted out there to see if there were eggs, but no. Two hens (I should say pullets - they're only 5 months old) were in the same nest box, and two more were scootching hay around in the corner under the roosts. I waited for a while, but nothing happened so I went back in the house. About 15 minutes later, I came out and there were two eggs in the nest box and one under the roosts.

Maybe their timing is just off...

~Lannie