Big Ears in the Backyard

This lovely deer is one of three who frequent the yard. The mom brought her two fawns through earlier this year when they still had white spots like Bambi. Now in just a few months they are gray/brown like the mom. They still have the curiosity of youngsters, consequently, this young one turned back to look at me as they were leisurely exiting the backyard. As charming as they look, they still do damage to plants. They have munched on the new apricot tree branches and the new cherry tree branches. Who knows how much they will enjoy the fruit in the spring! I camp out during the day to watch over the chickens, from Mr. Fox. I might as well be shooing the deer away from the fruit trees too.

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!