Our first BLUE egg!

FIVE eggs today...and not only did each of the ladies "pay the rent", but today we got our very first BLUE egg! Thank you, Sage! (Guess who's "Chicken of the Week"?!) The bummer? We still can't eat the eggs because of the wormer. (The white egg in the picture is a store-bought egg thrown in as a color reference.)

Three eggs today!

Three eggs today...THREE! Do you know what that means?! It means that the pullets are laying! THE PULLETS ARE FINALLY LAYING! Woohoo! I am so happy! So, so happy! I suspected that at least one pullet had started laying when we began seeing two eggs a day, but this confirms it! (Ugly Betty is quite reliable, but Big Mama is a bit of a freeloader and rarely makes deposits into the "food bank".) And who laid the glorious third egg? Parsley! (This definitely earns her the honor of "Chicken of the Week", even thought it's only Monday!) How do we know it was Parsley? Because when Sam couldn't find her, he peeked into the pop door on the chicken house and discovered her sitting on the nest. Sam waited and waited, and when Parsley emerged from the coop, he went in and found a perfectly lovely, warm egg!

Why all the excitement, you ask? Well, I have read that pullets are supposed to start laying at about 20 weeks, but that was 8 weeks ago! Everyone assured me that my pullets would begin laying at some point, but I was starting to lose hope--especially as the daylight hours began to shorten. (Chickens often stop laying due to shortened day length during the late fall and winter months.) I was beginning to think that I had the only pullets in all of chickendom that would never lay eggs. (Parsley's sisters over in the Baergen coop have been laying for weeks--maybe even months!) But today was the day, and oh glorious day, because at least one little pullet has finally started laying!

Isn't it ironic...

This morning I treated my flock's water with wormer.  This afternoon, I discovered two eggs in the nest box...TWO! Now you must understand that I am new to chickens and have only two laying hens and three pullets. I have NEVER had a two egg day...EVER! (Of course I've only been in chickens since June and started with pullets. The laying hens came to us in October, but only one of them is really "paying the rent".) I have been waiting for this day for so long... It might even be an egg from one of my pullets! But alas, today just had to be the day I started the wormer, and proper worming protocol dictates that I throw the next two weeks' worth of eggs away. Oh well, If I can't eat the eggs, at least I can honor them here. Goodbye lovely eggs. You might have made a tasty dish...