- Mar 15, 2009
- 183
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Not just chicken, but chicken, guinea, and duck! All firsts, all in the same day!
So last June we bought six guineas, ended up with three girls, three boys, one girl decided to be homicidal and ended up on the Christmas Dinner table. (Guinea is really delicious!)
On Election Day in November, we brought home fourteen RIR roo over White Rock hen one day old chicks, one RIR chick, and three Pekin one day old ducklings. Ended up with eight hens (roos, well, home raised chicken tastes and smells much much better than the store bought uck.) including the pure RIR, and two male ducks (sadly gone) and one female duck.
Fast forward to Tuesday, March 24th. No eggs laid yet by any of our girls.
My daughter goes out to feed the birds, comes back in breathless. "The hens laid an egg! But it's got a hole in it." Long story short, by the time I got out there, they'd eaten it all, only a few bits of shell left, which I could see were a nice pale brown. Dang! They ate the first egg! Well, there will be others. So we kept checking the coop all day, nothing.
Later that afternoon, the guineas were playing in the newly planted strawberry bed. I had my daughter go chase them out. She comes back in, "My guinea laid an egg!" It actually laid it right in front of her while she was trying to shoo her out of the strawberry patch! Second first egg of the day!
Not long after, we go to check the hens and ducks again (got two already laying hen ducks last week to keep our home-raised one happy after she lost her brothers) and lo and behold, there is a broken egg in the duck coop! Very soft shell couldn't hold up. Oh well. Definitely from our little girl duck we raised, we already got the other ducks that day. Third first egg of the day!
So we got ALL three first eggs from three different fowl all on the same day! Talk about awesome! I'm so excited even now I can hardly believe it!
So then Wednesday, we anxiously check for eggs, none in the a.m. None at noon. Around three, yay, an egg in the hen coop! Beautiful, perfect, not broken, a very nice pullet egg, creamy light brown, laid right next to one of the "dummy" Easter eggs we have in there to encourage laying in the nest. I rescued it just as one of our curious pullets decided she wanted to peck it.
Still none from our newly laying duck until an hour or so later, all the ducks were playing in the rain in the driveway, we kept watch on them through the window, one minute no egg, next minute, an egg lying there! Still soft-shell, but this one definitely had some gritty pre-shell on it, and it was perfect and unbroken, so now it's in the fridge happily resting with the others.
Not long after that, another egg in the guinea coop!
This is so amazing. I've always wanted chickens laying eggs, didn't even know about guineas until a couple years ago, and hadn't really planned on ducks until the guy we were buying chicks from mentioned he had some hatching with the chicks. Now we have eggs to collect!
The pullet egg, I think from the RIR/White Rock Cross, sorry the flash washed out the color
The pullet egg in natural light without the flash, love the creamy color!
And, from left to right, soft-shell duck egg, pullet egg, and guinea egg.
So last June we bought six guineas, ended up with three girls, three boys, one girl decided to be homicidal and ended up on the Christmas Dinner table. (Guinea is really delicious!)
On Election Day in November, we brought home fourteen RIR roo over White Rock hen one day old chicks, one RIR chick, and three Pekin one day old ducklings. Ended up with eight hens (roos, well, home raised chicken tastes and smells much much better than the store bought uck.) including the pure RIR, and two male ducks (sadly gone) and one female duck.
Fast forward to Tuesday, March 24th. No eggs laid yet by any of our girls.
My daughter goes out to feed the birds, comes back in breathless. "The hens laid an egg! But it's got a hole in it." Long story short, by the time I got out there, they'd eaten it all, only a few bits of shell left, which I could see were a nice pale brown. Dang! They ate the first egg! Well, there will be others. So we kept checking the coop all day, nothing.
Later that afternoon, the guineas were playing in the newly planted strawberry bed. I had my daughter go chase them out. She comes back in, "My guinea laid an egg!" It actually laid it right in front of her while she was trying to shoo her out of the strawberry patch! Second first egg of the day!
Not long after, we go to check the hens and ducks again (got two already laying hen ducks last week to keep our home-raised one happy after she lost her brothers) and lo and behold, there is a broken egg in the duck coop! Very soft shell couldn't hold up. Oh well. Definitely from our little girl duck we raised, we already got the other ducks that day. Third first egg of the day!
So we got ALL three first eggs from three different fowl all on the same day! Talk about awesome! I'm so excited even now I can hardly believe it!
So then Wednesday, we anxiously check for eggs, none in the a.m. None at noon. Around three, yay, an egg in the hen coop! Beautiful, perfect, not broken, a very nice pullet egg, creamy light brown, laid right next to one of the "dummy" Easter eggs we have in there to encourage laying in the nest. I rescued it just as one of our curious pullets decided she wanted to peck it.
Still none from our newly laying duck until an hour or so later, all the ducks were playing in the rain in the driveway, we kept watch on them through the window, one minute no egg, next minute, an egg lying there! Still soft-shell, but this one definitely had some gritty pre-shell on it, and it was perfect and unbroken, so now it's in the fridge happily resting with the others.
Not long after that, another egg in the guinea coop!
This is so amazing. I've always wanted chickens laying eggs, didn't even know about guineas until a couple years ago, and hadn't really planned on ducks until the guy we were buying chicks from mentioned he had some hatching with the chicks. Now we have eggs to collect!
The pullet egg, I think from the RIR/White Rock Cross, sorry the flash washed out the color
The pullet egg in natural light without the flash, love the creamy color!
And, from left to right, soft-shell duck egg, pullet egg, and guinea egg.
