Arriauna's First Egg

The girls are celebrating atop their run. The sun shines on Arriauna! Today she laid her first egg. It is a lovely light aqua color. Very hard to capture the delicate color for your viewing pleasure. There were no white eggs in the house for photo comparison. She is 17 ½ weeks old.

Eggs like eggs should be

http://www.omlet.co.uk/ includes several 4-banger egg cartons as accessories to the Eglu. Knowing the chicken owner will not have zillions of extra eggs, the little 4-bangers make nice gifts to appease the neighbors. The photos show 2 shades of eggs; light brown matte finish, darker brown glossy. Do these chickie girls have PhotoShop in their fancy hot pink eglu? Maybe. The light brown matte finish eggs have tiny white speckles that do not show in the above photo. They are from Queen B, who was shown in an earlier blog as the prime mother suspect when we got the first egg. The darker brown glossy egg is from Hecky, a lovely black Astrolorp with a green metallic sheen to her black feathers. Hecky is not a very fancy name for such a lovely hen but when she and her ‘litter mate’ Henny were little chicks they were solid black fuzz with outsized black beaks. They looked like Heckle and Jekyll, the crows from the cartoons. After they got larger we started calling them Hecky and Henny. Henny has not started laying yet. She is a bit smaller than Hecky and much more reserved. I hope she has not decided that laying is not for her. She is not really late….yet. They were not expected to start laying until 18 weeks old, which would have been September 15, but Queen B laid that first egg on September 4, Labor Day! Henny is only a day or so late. Arriauna, the Ameracauna, is a week younger than the other three. No one is being rushed into production…after all, this is just for the fun of it! It was fun to eat those tall golden yolks too!

Ain't it beautiful?

Here is our first egg. It arrived Sept. 4, Labor Day! No doubt from Queen B, the 16 week old Barred Rock. She has always acted the most mature. Of course all that SWAAAAKKING and prancing around is a dead giveaway too! Todate (Sept 9, 2007) we have 7 eggs. Five are obviously from Queen B....they are light brown with tiny white speckles. The other 2 eggs are darker brown and glossy. They are from Hecky, a black Astrolorp whose black feathers have a metallic green sheen. Hecky was the only other hen seen going into the nest, plus she couldn't keep quiet about it either. Neither can I. This photo makes Queen B's egg look shiny from the flash but it is really more matte finish.

Our first egg

Queen B would be disappointed to see this unprofessional photo of her first egg. I assured her there was value in publication. This egg was laid on Monday, September 4, 2007, notable for three events, United States Labor Day, Janmastami - Krishna's Birthday, and Queen B's first egg. There are now 2 more eggs, all compliments of the Queen. Apparently she works a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. Will she take the weekend off? Can she control these things? Stay tuned for more high adventures in Eggs-in-the eglu-land. Getting up each morning is now chock full of excitement. You have heard it suggested 'Get a life!'...well, I did.

Arriauna is growing into a beauty

Arriauna Ameracauna is such a special chickie girl. Do you remember her from the ThreeChickenFarm blog masthead, a tiny chick measured against a clothespin? Now she is a beautiful redhead with a bit of blond-in-the-brain. She has a love of life and would rather fly than walk. Most days find her atop the run more often than along side it, pecking the ground with her sisters. She watches the squirrels in the tree overhead. She watches the Flight For Life heliocopters traveling to nearby Penrose Hospital. Yesterday she listened and spotted high-flying geese. Yes, they were flying north.

When the other three hens rest on the roost in their run, they all face the same direction. Not Arriauna, invariably she will squeeze in between them, facing the other way. She just clucks to a different drummer.

Could Queen B be the new mom?

Our first egg! It is a beautiful medium size light brown egg with tiny white specks. Queen B has been SWWAAAK-SWAAAKING a bit lately but 'the books' say they will not lay until 18 weeks old. This is only the 16th week so it didn't seem like an egg possiblity. Last night I opened the egg door to bring Henny outside for a dusting (she has been scratching her neck feathers out). I glanced down into the nest before reaching in to lift her off the roost. Voila! a lovely little egg in the nest bowl looking so alone because I had not put straw into it after the last eglu cleaning. Queen B is a Barred Rock. She and the 2 Astralorps produce brown eggs, Arriauna Americauna will lay green/blue eggs, so there are only 3 possible moms of this first egg. September 3, 2007 appropriately named Labor Day.