Chicken Update

Only the Barred Rock hen avoided this shot

My chickens are 21 weeks old!  It has been a long haul with these ladies - they are pretty unlucky chickens.  They were delivered unceremoniously to my doorstep while I was at work.  One of them became tangled in the netting I used to cover the brooder and almost strangled to death.  Five got wiped out by the opossum.   And then this long, cold winter with the water in their coop and run constantly freezing.  They've been through a lot.  I've been hoping they would start laying some eggs soon so I could be reassured that they were not scarred for life.  And then...this morning...bam!  An egg.  A pretty big one, too.  The last batch laid only small eggs at first, but whichever of these lovely ladies produced this morning's beauty is at the head of the class!

(Side note: Last Sunday I spotted a raccoon in the yard in the middle of the afternoon.  I chased him off, but of course he came back.  After last Thursday's snowstorm I came out to find tracks all around the chicken coop, looping crazily a couple times around the backyard, and then right back over the fence again.  But he didn't get into the new-and-improved chicken run!)

I'll have to sell a couple of these hens soon.  There are too many of them for the space they're in, and I honestly could never use six chickens' worth of eggs anyway.

This Red Star is my favorite candidate for laying the first egg.  She's always been the biggest of the bunch, and the feed store owner says Red Stars are "egg-laying machines"