All of our hens are officially laying now. Yay!!! We now have 8 hens-a-laying, and a Rooster. The last hen finally laid her first egg on January 1!
Little Henrietta is our littlest hen. She is also the sweetest. Our daughter can hold her just like a baby in arms. She just totally relaxes and loves to be cuddled. This may sound crazy to some, but chickens are really soft! They are curious and funny looking and beautiful. Henrietta is an Ameracauna, so she has puffy cheeks. So cute. And this coming from a woman who does not like birds!!
When Henrietta was a little chick, about 1 week old, she nearly died. I nursed her back to health with a medicine dropper and sugar water. She made it and has always trusted us more than any of the other chickens. We call her the baby.
We have 2 Ameracaunas, Hazel and Henrietta. This breed is supposed to lay a greenish blue egg. However, when Hazel started laying, she laid a pearly cream colored egg. We were a little disappointed, so we were hoping that Henrietta would come through for us.
Sure enough, she lays the most beautiful eggs!! Here is her first egg!!!
We get a nice variety of egg colors and shapes. We can tell which eggs came from which hen based on color and shape.
We are charting our eggs. Each egg is weighed and charted for each bird and we note what time of day (am, noon, or pm) it was laid. We are learning about averaging the size egg a hen lays, graphing the size changes over time, and following each hen's laying pattern. We are learning so much!!!
Since we have a rooster, we know that many of our eggs are fertile (yes, you can eat fertile eggs) Here is a page about how to tell if an egg is fertile - very interesting, and with pictures. Fertile vs. INfertile egg
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