Congrats on your first egg!! I got mine this week, too. Super exciting!! Some tips I saw online to get them to lay in the nests might be to try putting some wooden eggs or golf balls in the nest boxes. I have read that they like to lay their eggs among others, so I put golf balls in my nests and so far all but 2 out of a dozen eggs have been laid in the nests. I did find one in the outdoor run and I found one this morning, broken, on the poop board beneath the roosts. I think that is normal and to be expected when they first start laying, until they get it all figured out. Even though a few of my chickens have started laying, I still leave the golf balls in there for the newbies so they know that's where they're supposed to lay their eggs. Not sure if that's the right thing to do or not, but I have found that despite the years of research I have done, this is a learn as you go kind of venture. Best of luck!!First time chicken owners, we have had our 5 chickens for 16 weeks now and we finally got our first egg that we found this morning. We are so very excited... it actually threw our whole morning off and we almost got the kids off to school late. My daughter ended up eating breakfast in the car and my son went to school with his hair sticking straight up!! Oh my. Anyway I have questions!!!
First off we don't know which one of these lovely ladies laid this egg... I have read that all 5 of ours will probably be giving us some shade of brown. I guess it really doesn't matter too much who laid it but can any of you tell what breed may have laid it? We have a buff orpington, australorp, 2 barred rocks, and a RIR.
Next we have nesting boxes in the coop but I actually found the egg on the ground in the corner of the coop beside the dresser we turned into nesting boxes, how do you suggest we get them to lay in the boxes? Because if they lay on the ground all the time our 5 kiddos that do the chores may end up smashing the eggs... they aren't always observant. Another thing is that all our chickens are the same age, do you think we will start getting eggs on a regular basis now that 1 laid an egg? How long will it take for the eggs to get to the actual size that they will be... I'm sure you can tell by the picture that it is much smaller than an average sized store bought egg. I think that's all my questions.
Most of all we are soooo very excited. We have worked hard to keep these girls happy for the past 16 weeks, we actually almost lost the brown one but we managed to save her and we are so glad. We've only had them for 4 months but they are part of the family now and we love them!!
Renee
