We've been keeping a close eye on the chicken coop lately; checking the next boxes and glancing around the outdoor run. And today we finally found what we've been looking for - our first egg!
This little egg is a bit smaller than an average hen's egg. That is common for young chickens and it shouldn't be much longer until we're getting full sized eggs from each one of our birds. We didn't actually find this egg in the nest boxes either. Evidently one of chickens decided she'd rather lay her egg outdoors. When Greg spotted the egg, we were pretty sure that it hadn't been there long, but admittedly, we had been checking the next boxes more thoroughly than the rest of the coop. So we thought we'd better make sure that the egg was fresh.
An easy test to check the freshness of an egg is to simply place it in a glass filled with water. Our egg sank to the bottom of the glass and sat on its side. That means that it's very fresh and we can feel confident about eating it safely.
To help you see that our egg is a little on the small side, we placed it inside the carton of local eggs that we recently bought at the grocery store. Can you see which one is ours?
We aren't sure which one of our chickens actually laid the first egg. It wasn't one of our Easter Eggers, because they lay blue eggs. But our Plymouth Barred Rocks, Buff Orpingtons, and Rhode Island Reds will all lay brown eggs, so it could have been any one of them. Whichever it was, we do hope that she starts giving lessons to the rest of the flock!
Edited to add: After a couple of days observing the flock, we think the chicken that laid our first egg is the Rhode Island Red that you can see standing behind the water jug in the last photo.
This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.
Edited to add: After a couple of days observing the flock, we think the chicken that laid our first egg is the Rhode Island Red that you can see standing behind the water jug in the last photo.
This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.
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