We have eggs!

My girls are grown up!  Mamie and I got back from a shopping trip from Freeport to find Mike in the chicken coop.  He proudly pointed out that the girls started their own nest in the corner of their house, and had laid EIGHT eggs!  We know it happened within the last day or so, and are very proud of them.  All the eggs are brown, so the first layers were barred rocks/rhode island reds.

First eggs!

So Mike has officially won the bet, and I was wrong to count him out in the last post.  Since winning his own homebrew was kind of silly, he also got the honor of feasting on the first egg.  Also, Mamie and I told him that we didn't believe he hadn't planted the eggs unless he produced a double-yolker, since he did find the eggs while he was home alone.  Luckily for Mike, the first egg that he cracked was a double-yolker, so he is officially the winner of the eggs prediction contest of 2011.

First egg, with the double yolk

Cooked first eggs (the second was just a single yolk)

First bite

First chew

The eggs are good!

It was tough for Mike to get through the first taste since I was documenting it so thoroughly, but he did it.  The eggs were fabulous (he was kind enough to give me a little bite), and we're very excited that the girls are now producing.  Mike also cleaned out their bedding and gave them fresh shavings in the coop, so they are well rewarded chickens today.  We are going to try putting some golf balls in the nesting boxes to see if that encourages anyone to lay in the correct spot, but I don't have high hopes that we'll be able to train the chickens.