We Have Eggs!

For the past two days it has been raining, but today we had quite a nice afternoon, so I made the rounds outside to pull weeds, harvest fruit and veggies, and check on our animals. Inside the henhouse I saw this:

We have eggs! I ran to get the kids and my camera, and then we gathered them up. As you can probably tell from the photo above, the girls haven't figured out how to use their nesting boxes yet — these are on the floor beneath their roosting bar. And yes, that's poop next to them. And what I think might be some egg yolk of one that broke, or, more likely, was pecked at. Dolley pecked at one in my hand, and there are bits of shell visible on one in the photo below. We'll keep an eye on this now that we know they are laying — if they keep eating the eggs, it's a sign that they need more calcium in their diet.

I had a hunch that Sally would be the first to lay because she was the biggest and the first to fill out to look like a grown-up. Looks like I was right:

As you can see, this is definitely one of Sally's eggs. She's our Barred Rock, with the black and white barred feathers — one of which was left behind as evidence on this egg. It's possible that some of these are Dolley's as well, since she is the other chicken that will lay brown eggs. 

All in all, we have 5 medium sized brown eggs. I took this photo as soon as Tiegan put them in the basket — obviously we will wash them off before we put them away. We put one in each nesting box to try to give the ladies a clue about where to leave future eggs. We have three to eat, but it would be more fair to wait for at least a fourth so everyone can try one. These are small and feel lightweight in hand, so we're not quite ready for a big Sunday brunch. Not yet, anyway.