First Egg!!

The hens that I bought at the end of last month have given me their first egg today! Well done gals! Lets hope that this egg is the first in a torrent of eggs! As it is the first effort for one of the new hens, it is small. I have taken a photo of the egg for everybody to see and then one next to a large egg so you can compare sizes.
Most commercial egg producers will only keep a hen for one laying season. A hen will go into a moult (dropping feathers and growing new ones) and then her next laying season will start. Hens will lay fewer eggs in the next season but they'll be larger. Commercial operations will change to fresh hens at this point. I like the larger eggs (and I'm not a commercial egg producer) and I'll keep a hen until she dies of old age. Hybrid hens will be good enough layers their entire lives for our purposes.

I've been uber-busy with work this week, coming down with some sort of stomach-hurts-fever bug on Thursday night didn't help. Why does this sort of stuff always happen towards the end of a month? Stoical me just took something to keep the fever down, and went to work. In case you're worried. It has passed.

I've been going around the house today doing those annoying jobs that I always say I'll get done "sometime", but never actually do. This included touching up paint in rooms that have been painted for some time now, changing all the light bulbs in the outside lights that went out in the summer and getting family photos put on the walls. I feel so virtuous when I do that sort of stuff. I can relax better when odd jobs have been finished and crossed off the to-do list. Next up: defrost the freezer :-(