We have eggs!!

Yesterday we noticed our chickens making this horrible racket. BOC BOC BOC BOC BOC BOCBOCBOCBOCBOC BAWKBAWKBAWKBAWK!!!!!. I thought, "Well there goes the whole 'chickens are quiet and great for a neighborhood' idea."

And then one of the girls noticed that "Melody" AKA "The Alpha Chick" was in the coop by herself. And a little while later we had a beautiful brown TINY egg! Which was passed from girl to girl to girl to Mom and never was a chicken egg more adored than that little egg was. I'm telling you, it will be a little sad to crack that thing open tomorrow morning.

We came home from some errands and found another egg right next to the back porch step. It was a little larger but still small and I suspected our Australorp, Black Berry. Crazy that two chickens laid their first eggs within hours of each other! Our girls are synchronized! And today we were gifted with two more eggs, right on schedule and by the same girls who laid yesterday (it was the Australorp--I caught her in the nesting box). Hopefully the other two will decide to join in!

It was really hard to concentrate on getting work done yesterday and today because we all wanted to run out and see if there were any more eggs. I was just as bad as the kids. I found all sorts of excuses to walk by the coop. Oh what fun it is to have chickens!!

The girls spotted Jerry, the neighborhood oppossum in our backyard last night. I hear that oppossoms like to eat chickens and I've found some digging around our coop. We put Christmas lights up and that was the end of the digging marks. I wonder if old Jerry is getting braver though. I don't think he can bust into the coop but we are going to further reinforce it this weekend. Hardware cloth my friends. The big guns. No one gets a free chicken dinner on our watch.

Off to do something besides read about, write about, or think about chickens. The obsession is being put up on the shelf for the evening--after I take another peek at our precious little clutch of eggs!