Peaches lays her first egg of the year

It’s all been happening on the egg front over the last few days. Yesterday Speckles laid her second egg of the year, five days after the first. Once again she made a meal of it, going in and out of the nest box all morning and finally settling with a little pile of pine shavings on her back.

She came out shouting and I went to inspect and found it broken with Emerald attempting to eat it. The shell was good and hard but the dented break looked as if it had been trampled on. All the bigger girls were trying to get at it and I had to close the nest box and remove all trace before opening up again. We have been getting few enough eggs without breakages.

This morning I went out at quarter past seven as this is when the automatic door is now opening. Under Freckles perch was a broken little egg. This one had a partly soft shell. Freckles only laid her first egg two days ago so this was quicker than I would have expected.

It was definitely hers though as she did the thing they often do when this happens. She didn’t realised she had laid it and spent the morning shouting and going in the nest box. It must have fallen from her while she was on the perch and the fall, plus the thinness of the shell, caused it to break. Now adding to our lack of eggs we have two broken in two days.

I spent some time in the run as I had no lunch deliveries and I was putting up some tarpaulin under the roof panels in the new girls part of the run, by the hatch, to try to keep it drier. The panels at this end drip and I am hoping that this will keep it dry so we that we can take our time with integrating the new girls.

All the time that I was working Freckles and Peaches were shouting their heads off. It seemed that they both wanted to sit in the nest box at the same time. I wished that I could explain to Freckles that she had already laid her egg and didn’t need to be doing this.

Eventually they decided to share the nest box and it all calmed down.

Freckles and Peaches share the nest box

Peaches finally laid her first egg of the year. This is two weeks later than last year. It had her tell tale blob of poop on the end, I don’t know why, but she is the only girl always to do this. It was also really long. Peaches always has laid bigger eggs than Barley but not so many of them.

Peaches egg is in front of Freckles

I picked up the egg and Freckles started shouting as if it was her egg. I have a comparison coming up later which made me smile.

Freckles is shouting

After this Freckles seemed to accept that her job was done and she came out of the nest box and attacked a bit of melon then took herself off for a dust bath.

Freckles and Rusty have a dust bath together

They are soon joined by Peaches and Barley

Peaches first egg of the year in the middle

Freckles first egg is on the right, Peaches long egg is in the middle and a medium shop bought egg is on the left. Freckles is a slightly yellow/cream colour compared to Peaches white egg. Peaches egg is impressive in size compared to a standard hens egg.

Egg on the stand for comparison

Pointy end up

I always store eggs pointy end down but thought I would show them pointy end up to compare the length of Peaches egg. Now you can see why I smiled at the thought that Freckles could imagine that was her egg.

At least I have one out of three eggs to keep. Hopefully eggs will be more abundant soon and the girls will settle into egg laying without quite so much drama.