EGG!

Sunny's Egg in my Big German-Norwegian Hand.

"When are your chickens going to start laying eggs?"
"Do you get lots of Eggs?"

These are the questions I hear all the time when people ask me about my chickens.  Don't they know that the birds themselves are just special in and of themselves?  Probably not.  They just want to know about the eggs.  So I become quite  boring when I tell them:

"I don't know.  They're not mature enough yet."  or,
"Nope, not yet."  My husband says teasingly,  "So how much is that first egg worth, $300 or $400 dollars?"  Ha-ha! 

Well after today.  It was priceless.

I came home for lunch and Sunny, my Buff Orpington was rooting around the deck behind my son's Tonka Trucks and toy bin.  She was more busy or more diligently poking around every nook and cranny.  She flew up on my dog's Kennel fencing although not seeming frightened.  She was panting but not drinking.  When I finished lunch I found her rooting around on my husband's tool bench in the garage.  Meandering around bags, ski ropes, power tool cases...  I got her back down backed out my car and closed the garage door.  Once back at work I started thinking about this "searching" behavior.  Roger, her best friend seemed worried about her, more alert for her.  Even he knew something wasn't right.  Is she ill?... was my first thought.  Is she having an earring complication a week later?  If you know what I mean...

Is she a free range chicken looking for a good nesting spot to lay her egg?!  DUH!    I got on Backyard Chickens and put Sunny's odd behavior out there on the world wide web for confirmation.  A very kind lady from the United Kingdom assured me that this is the case indeed. My excitement could hardly be contained from that point on.  As soon as it was time I  finished my work, grabbed my things, got the kids off the bus and told them what was going on.  All of the flock greeted us in the drive way.  Except Sunny.  I told the kids, "Go find her." Heidi found her on a retaining wall section of Russian Sage and a Honeycrisp apple tree.  Still panting, still searching.  We gently picked her up and carried her to the coop. Offered her fresh water and her feed.  She took some.  I then got her more pine shavings and Long Grass from the woods to use as nesting materials in one of the nesting boxes.  She went to work immediately.  Her comb and waddles bright red.

She turned this way and that. Scratching the nesting materials outward, trying to make a bowl of sorts--a nest suitable for her first egg.

Still she worked.  The whole nest process taking about 1/2 hour or so.  We sat mesmerized by her work and our anticipation never waivered.



She made 3 strange squawks we'd never heard before, her body slowly rising and the subtle sound of an egg landing gently onto her carefully made nest.

She let Heidi pick it out.  Still panting.  Poor girl.  A gigantic egg exceeding our expectations.  I had told the kids don't expect much.  A small one or deformed as her system is just learning and is young.  But here a monster egg that could quite possibly be a double yolker!

We sat cuddling her and making sure she was okay.  We re-opened the coop door and Roger came in, like a worried expectant father of sorts.  It was sort of neat.  His worry for her.  He looked relieved to see her.  Bock-bocking outside the coop during the whole process had him stressed out.  Such a good friend to Sunny.  We stared at her in wonderment  and in a new light.  Sunny no longer a "chick"  or a young immature teenaged pullet.  She's graduated into a motherhood of sorts.  We regard her with a reverence as a provider. 

Somebody suggested we keepsake the first egg and blow it out and others want to know if it's a double yolker.  I'll talk to the kids tomorrow Morning and see what they want to do with it.  Egg shell ornament for an Easter Tree or Scrambled Egg.

In the meantime, Roger roosted and is sleeping right next to Sunny on a lower peg of the roosting ladder, when they usually are on the more choice higher roost.  So Sweet.

Post Script 9/10/12  Sunny's egg was a single yolk.  I did blow it out and saved the shell and we made the yolk that came out into a scrambled egg which was the most delicious egg we ever tasted.