Woot!

We just got our very first egg! :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

We got our first egg a year ago and the fun has still not worn off. A dozen a day for a year, and it's still cool!

We got the first egg from our second batch of chickens last week: so cute and tiny!

we expected them to be at first, but not tiny. I tried to take a decent pic but couldn't get it in focus. Just a small brown egg with white speckles.

Congrats on your girls, too! :hi:

nobody wants small. go figure. they are cute.
and i don't eat them.

I'm going nuts. Out of 9 layers, 2 are broody and won't do squat except sit on their golf balls (no rooster = no chicks), and of the remaining 7 we're getting 4 eggs a day. Me thinks they are hiding them again dangit!

only the five Jersey Black Giants are old enough and that's where this one came from. It was in the nest box right next to the golf ball. They have been ignoring those nest boxes up to now.

Of the remaining hens, five are one month old Buffs and one is a RIR that's probably close to being four months old.

Our older flock are:
2-Silver Laced Wyandotte
2-Buff Orpington
1-Barred Rock
1-Maran
1-Australorpe
1-Red Sex Link (my favorite along with one of the BO's)
1-White Ameracauna

We also got 9 chicks earlier this summer. 3 each
Partridge Ameracauna
New Hampshire Reds
Rhode Island Reds

They live in lavish luxury (really!) and have the run of our property daily - very happy girls. Just wish I could get then to stop getting up to my work bench and knocking everything over.

We chose the ones we did based on winter hardiness for the most part. Plus I love how pretty they are. The RIR was given to us by a neighbor and was the only one we didn't choose ourselves.

Ours don't get to roam around too much on their own due to our dogs, the other dogs that roam up and down the road, and the coyotes. We do have them in a chicken tractor that we move around frequently so they can graze.

How did you acquire such a group?

We are in Mount Shasta, CA so we get plenty of snow and cold weather. My wife researched the breeds and chose the first flock based on hardiness. I really enjoy them. Every time I go outside I have a chicken parade as the follow me around the property.

This summer when we thought we had lost one of the hens, I went up to the Grange in Medford and was going to replace her with a few chicks. I came home with nine... The last nine they had for the season. Wife thought I was nuts but didn't complain.

We are really fortunate. Even though we are in the country, our neighborhood is far enough from the wilderness boundary and have never had any predator problems. Even the neighbor dogs show no interest in messing with the girls, so they literally wander around our un-fenced property. It's pretty cool.

I had to wait for the hubband to get a good pic. He's better with the camera than I am.

Those first eggs are so tiny, I can always tell when one of the younger hens in my older flock starts laying.l

I've been getting 4-6 eggs a day this summer. Some loss to packrats, if I don't check early in the day; the girls are free-ranging and have several favorite laying spots.

I love having them drifting around the place, clucking and scratching.

it was gonna be very soon. We'll be watching those boxes like hawks now! :hi:

:party:

How old are your Jersey Giants?

We are "expecting" any day now!

when I saw it in My DU before I even opened it! :rofl:

Let's see, we picked them up on April 20th, at which time they were 9 weeks old, so they just turned 6 months old the beginning of this month. We were expecting them to start any day but I think they were really put off by that stretch of triple digit temps. Now today, it's overcast, drizzling (the garden is thankful!) and cooler. I hope their little bodies don't get confused.

Bill called it the $4000 egg. LOL We haven't spent anywhere near that much on the hens and the garden and I keep telling him it's gonna pay off. He loves doing this stuff, too. He's the primary chicken caretaker. I always call them his girls.

Tell me again, I know you have guineas, and I've seen Elvis, what kind of pullets do you have and how many? How old are they now? I hope yours begin laying soon, too. It's so exciting when it finally happens!

...so we may have another month before we see any eggs :(

We have 3 Australorpe hens, and Elvis, who was supposed to be an Australorpe hen.
Elvis & his Girls

(I have yet to take a good picture of these birds. They are so black that they seem to just absorb all the light, and no photo yet has adequately captured the scalloped texture of their feathers. I may try to take some inside with studio lighting, but that would lose the green & blue iridescence from the sunlight. )

The Guineas have Flown the Coop. We are not entirely sad that they are gone. The Hen was wonderful....sweet, gentle, slow & deliberate. The cock was a nightmare...LOUD, aggressive, and pugnacious. He would chase our (smaller) chickens into corners and attack them. They stayed stressed out whenever he was around. We were careful not to turn our backs on him. Doing so invited a sneak attack and a hard peck on the calf.

In his defense, it was ALL about protecting the hen. He would guard her constantly. If food was available, he would stand guard (not eating himself) while she was eating and chase away anything that came within sight, including us. I believe they mate for life. I've also heard (from locals) that not all Guinea Cocks (Game Cocks) are that aggressive.

Because he was so aggressive, we couldn't keep them in the same coop with our chickens, so we gave them another protected place, but they decided to start roosting on the roof instead. Then, one morning, they were gone.

We did get 3 small eggs from the Guineas before they left...that averages out to about $125 per egg.
They were very tasty. Smaller (about 1/2) and earthier than chicken eggs.

We may get more in the future, but right now, we are happy with the chickens. We are going to add 4 - 6 hens very soon....probably Reds or Buffs.

So happy about your first egg.....a HUGE milestone.
We mark our progress here by celebrating "Firsts".
Congrats on your milestone. It is a big step AWAY from Corporate America, Factory Food, and submission to the machine.
:patriot:

Those Aussie lasses look just like our Jersey girls with the green and purple iridescence to their black feathers.

Sorry to hear the guineas departed, but it sounds like the male was a holy terror! Bill had some before we were married. He penned them for awhile and when he let them out, they all took off, too. It doesn't always work. I think they ended up at the neighbors down the road about a quarter mile. I always thought it was the females that were the noisy ones.

It is good to be able to share our firsts, our trials, our errors with a good group of supportive folks with a wide variety of experience and advice to lend. As a community, we can start to push back and say no to food drenched in blood and diesel.

:pals:

Still small but perfectly smooth and brown! :bounce: