Eggs!

Finally! One of the hens has started to lay eggs! She has been laying for a week now and we are hoping the others will begin to lay soon. My youngest was the one to discover the first egg and he was so excited! Now the kids look forward to going out every day to see if we have one yet.

The eggs are a little small but I'm hoping they will get bigger as the chickens get older. Even if they don't, once all of the hens begin to lay we will have plenty of eggs. The chickens are also beginning to develop some interesting personalities.

One of the roosters that we call Big Red is apparently the head rooster. He chases off the other roosters when they try to get frisky with the hens and he does NOT like the geese. If they get to close he will chase them and jump on them trying to pull out their feathers. It's actually quite funny to watch. Of course he doesn't let the fact that they are bigger than him deter him at all. He will often take on all five at once. Of course the funny thing is the geese are scared of him!

One of the funnier things we have observed is that one of the hens looks to my husband as her protector. If he is outside and a rooster is chasing her, she will run to him so the rooster will leave her alone. She also likes to hop up onto the fence when he is there so he can pet her. The funniest thing however, is when he goes out to feed them. They have learned where the food is and what the bucket looks like that we carry it in. When he goes out to feed them she wants him to pick her up so she can eat out of the cup or sit on his lap and eat. Tonight, he was standing up while he was feeding them and since she couldn't sit on his lap she decided to sit on his shoulder instead. Apparently she has decided that she is a pet, not a source of food.

The geese still are not laying eggs but I am not sure when they will start. It will probably be spring before we see them begin to lay eggs. My guess is one day they will come wandering up with some little ones trailing behind. Spring should prove to be very interesting. In the meantime, stay tuned because I'll be putting some pictures up soon of our sweet potato harvest as soon as we dig them up!