Eggs

Well we didnt have to wait very long for our first egg! Betty our Black Rock laid her first egg on the 25th August: Tiny but perfectly formed.

Here are Betty's first three eggs, getting progressively bigger, the third one on the right was 10 grams bigger than her first!

Mabel's first egg came a few days later:

It was a hefty 62 grams! Wow!
Finally Lisa our Amber Star joined the laying with her first egg:


It was a bit mishapen, but upon opening we discovered it was double yolker!
We have been getting 3 eggs a day ever since and at least half of them have been double yolkers! Betty's eggs are regularly over 60g now, and Mabel's eggs are often bigger. Lisa still hasnt got the hang of big eggs yet, but her small ones are perfectly formed.



You might well ask how we know who has laid what. I must confess we have spent so much time watching the girls since we got them. They are so funny! It is now a regular evening activity of our family to go and sit down at the garden table with a cup of tea and a biscuit after dinner and watch the girls. And during the lead up to getting eggs we were constanly going out to check for eggs, so we managed to see who had gone in and come out of the nest with each egg! They have all been laying for around 4 days now and they have syncronised! They form an orderly queue to go into the eglu nest to lay any time from around 10am and by 12 all three eggs are still warm in the nest waiting. We love chickens! Culinary delights we have had so far include Red Onion Tart, Extra chocolately Brownies, Banana and Chocolate Muffins, Quiche Loraine and various portions of egg mayonnaise sarnies.

Since having the chickens we have been inspired to start a veggie plot and we've even put our name down on the waiting list for an allotmemt. The lovely lady told us it would be about a year's wait :( So in the mean time lovely Dad has made us a raised bed at the sunny end of the garden. Elijah loved helping to build it and fill it with soil and compost.

We have sowed some spring cabbage for over wintering and some hasty radishes and salad in the hope that we will have a few more weeks of warm weather and some tasty last days of fresh salad and radish. No sign of any shoots yet, but my Dad reckons it will take a week :)
Grandad used to grow a lot of his own veg when I was a little girl, so I have informed him that his skills will be required when we finally get an allotment - he looked "delighted"! lol.