I wanted to get this out yesterday, but with sick people in the house, it just didn’t go as planned.
We were so excited to find our biggest egg yet in the coop yesterday. As you can see by the photo, it’s even bigger than the store-bought egg beside it. In fact, I plopped our egg on the scale and it was “jumbo” — the biggest chicken egg one will get (using the peewee through jumbo scale that the USDA uses.)
The best part about claiming that big egg was the fact that one of our hens was laying on it. When my daughter opened the nesting box, the hen moved and calmly allowed my daughter to take the egg. Usually, the chickens “yell” at us when we open the nesting box, but not yesterday. (My daughter claims that it’s because she’s the “Chicken Whisperer”.)
And on an even more exciting note, yesterday was the first day that we got 4 eggs. Oddly enough, one of the girls laid an egg on the ground in the corner of the run where they tried to sleep their first night out there (as chicks.) It never would have occurred to us to look on the ground, but sure enough, there was a cute brown egg waiting for my 4-year-old to retrieve it.
I’m guessing that yesterday’s cooler temps had something to do with the fact that we got four eggs. This record-setting heat has been tough on everyone, and despite the fact that we’ve been trying to keep the chickens cool, they’re not immune to the hot weather.
As I write this post, we’ve only collected one egg today, but our girls have a habit of laying in the early afternoon. This means that I won’t be surprised if we get at least two more eggs. If ALL the girls lay eggs today, I’ll be ecstatic!