Slowly but surely

My office phone rang on Thursday as I was wolfing down my lunch in the time between the end of my morning class at 1:00 and the beginning of my afternoon meeting. It was Hilda. “Lizette gave us the first blue egg today!” she announced. She was sure it was Lizette because she saw her in the nest box and retrieved an egg from underneath her that was so fresh it was still sticky.

Kirsty (presumably) has been reliably producing an egg every day except Thursday. It is possible that Anna Vic is starting to lay as well. She did the squat as soon as she ran out of the coop on Wednesday. The first day we got two eggs was yesterday, one brown and one blue. We find it strange that every hen seems to be maturing in her own sweet time. I suspect it is because these are heritage breeds that have not been aggressively selected for consistent maturing times. In any case, by the end of the week, my share of the eggs had accumulated to four.

My half of this week's egg production

I have mentioned that a hallmark of approaching maturity is “the squat,” a sign of sexual receptivity. I got two brief videos of Anna Vic (the Buff Orpington) and Lizette (the white Araucana) today. Lizette’s video is better.

We had quite a hard freeze last night. It got down to 30°F for a little while one morning last week, but Terry told me this morning that the temperature had dropped below freezing by 11:00 p.m., and it remained below freezing until after 8:00 this morning. The ginkgos dropped all their leaves in one fell swoop. Winter’s coming.