My ladies have started laying. In the mixed flock I don't know which breed started first, but I've caught both of the dark brahmas in the nest box.
With my flock of 2 Dark Brahmas, two Delawares, and Australorp, and a Black Langshan I'm getting up to 5 eggs a day. Most of them normal medium or large size in colors from mid-brown to a beautiful, terra cotta pink. I have no idea who laid which.
There have been a few interesting oddities as they got started: eggs brown on one end and pinkish on the other, "pixelated" eggs mottled in terra cotta and white, a pointy egg, a half-size egg, and a jelly egg (laid from the perch overnight and frozen solid when discovered.
Marion, who should have been Rosemary, is exactly what I would have wanted in a rooster if I had intended to get one. His voice is pleasant and not as loud as the late, Red Boys. He crows for the pre-dawn, the actual dawn, and only occasionally throughout the rest of the day. He respects me (I make sure to make the tamest hen squat for me every time I am at the coop door). His 6 hens are not losing feathers on their backs and yet the very first dozen eggs were, as best I could tell, fertile (I am unlikely to hatch any unless we move to a more rural area).
It is a little disconcerting to look at how very LARGE they all are. It makes me wish that the run were twice as big and that I'd had the coop set up 2 feet off the ground instead of 18 inches.
my splash buff columbian pullet (buff with splash instead of black) was sitting and arranging herself a nice little nest.
