We are so excited! Today we discovered our first egg!
We had been speculating when our hens would be ready to lay eggs. Different resources varied by a month! We were certainly expecting that our first egg wouldn’t show up until the middle of March. I had been talking to Laurie about when we needed to get the nesting boxes ready, if we should move the roo’s to another chicken house, etc.
Seth was out taking care of the chickens and I was helping him when I spied the egg. I showed it to Seth and he just about hit the roof! He ran off to tell everyone – mom commented on his announcement:
Mom! Mom! We’re true farmers now! We got our first egg! – Seth (6)
We all got a chance to look at it right were it was, and since Seth was taking care of the chickens he got to pick it up.
We are so excited! After five months of nurturing, worrying, waiting – finally an EGG!
We pulled off some of the boards we’d put up to try and train the roosters from hogging the nesting boxes and put down some bedding. We’ll see if they lay any more eggs. It’s the first one – so we don’t expect a flood of eggs or anything. Besides, a hen needs about 14 hours of daylight to be an effective egg layer and we haven’t been getting that this time of year.
I will spend some time working on the solar lighting so hopefully we can get that 14 hours of lighting we need. It is also recommended, and probably easier if the light is at the beginning of the day, especially if the lighting is on a timer. Chicken night vision isn’t that good, so if a timer turns the light off and it’s dark the darn chicken can’t see how to get where it needs to be even if it’s right in front of them!
Did I mention we’re excited to get our first egg!