Week 20; Day 6... Part 3

This thing is TINY!

And, for the most recent update.... we have eggs!!!

The girls were expected to start laying between 18 and 26 weeks of age, and as of the day we found the first, they were almost 20 weeks old. We still don't know for sure which one is laying, but we think it's Shelley (one of the ISA Browns). It IS a bit perplexing, though. The ISAs are supposed to lay brown eggs, and these are bluish-green, so we assumed at first that they were from Mama. However, after some research, I discovered that Brahmas are supposed to lay brown eggs as well. We still haven't eaten any yet; I'm trying to wait until we have enough for all of us to try them together.

Also according to my research, when pullets first start laying, the first few eggs will be as much as 3 or 4 days apart. But, so far, we've gotten an egg every day for the last 5 days. And I'm sure that at least the first four are all from the same hen; until today, each egg was progressively bigger than the previous day's.

In its 'natural habitat'...

Today, I kept a fairly close eye on the chickens, to see if we could determine who's laying. Mid-afternoon, I heard one of them making odd noises, and sent one of the the kids to check. He found an egg, still very warm, and Shelley standing over it, so we're pretty sure it's hers.

Because of the size differences, I'm turning the eggs into an OCD experiment, as well. For the first few weeks, I'll be keeping track of the eggs -- time of day laid, size and weight of each.

And that's about it for now. Don't worry, I won't be posting charts of the egg sizes, etc.; nor will I be posting photos of every single egg. I was far more excited when my husband found the first one than I expected [and continue to be excited each time we find another one], but not quite that excited. LOL

Compared to a store-bought egg.