You could say I was rather excited when I lifted the nest box lid and found this little gem. I may have whooped in delight. I may have even expressed my excitement a little loudly, apparently loud enough for the whole of Pirongia to hear according to Miss 16. But why not? I have been wanting hens in my backyard for ages and now that we have moved to a much bigger section out of the city my dream has come true. We have three feathered friends, Charlotte the Rhode Island Red (dark brown), Blossom the Coronation Sussex (white) and Buttercup the Buff Sussex (light brown). The girls arrived about four months ago. They were little pullets when we got them so they weren't laying yet. This is their first laying season. I didn't expect any eggs until spring but maybe the encouragement my Dear Husband (DH) gave them the other night by showing them an egg gave them the right idea. Yes that's right, I heard from Master 13 that DH took an egg that was to be cooked on the BBQ for a burger, over to the girls and showed them what they should be producing. It must have worked because a few days later, voila!
We had another, Matilda, but she went to chicken heaven. She developed an abscess and although we gave her antibiotics she got worse and became lame. I was very sad saying goodbye.
Funnily enough I don't like eating eggs. However I do use them in baking and I do like quiche and frittata, I just can't eat them on their own. Master 13 will eat eggs and so he was the recipient of the first home laid egg. He had it fried with bacon on a roll.
It fitted rather nicely on the roll, didn't stick out the side like a regular size egg so small has it's virtues. I was also quite pleased to have a small egg the other day when I wanted to increase a baking recipe by half. The original recipe called for 1 egg so I would need one and a half eggs altogether. Usually you would just put in two but by using a regular size egg and one the small eggs we are getting nearly every day now I was able to, quite cleverly I thought, do one and a half.
Well, I'm off to check the hen house again in the hope that there is another little present waiting for me. The big question is, which of the girls is laying the little gift of goodness? I think it is Buttercup or it could be Blossom but probably not Charlotte as she is still smaller than the other two. There have been suggestions by others to set up a camera inside the hen house but I think that is taking it a bit too far.
