The First Egg from Our Hens
July 6, 2024, was a momentous day here at Varela’s Farm. Rosie, one of our hens, laid her first egg! It all started as a usual Saturday morning. Dennis and I decided to spend some time outside drinking our morning coffee while letting the chickens roam freely around the yard. This is one of my favorite ways to start the day. I let them out of their chicken run while I clean out and refill their water and food dispensers. They are always pretty enthusiastic to get out after being “cooped up” all night. No pun intended.
At this point, our hens were about 18 weeks old. Typically, this is about the age when hens start laying eggs, so we were starting to be on “egg watch” every day. For some reason, we both thought Rosie would be the first hen to lay an egg. She is the largest and her comb and waddles are the most developed. She is also very vocal. This particular morning, we noticed she was staying in the coop and we could hear her jumping in and out of the nesting boxes. This was something we had never observed any of the hens doing before. She was also making more noise than usual. We could tell something was up!
We decided to sit and wait for her to come back out of the run before checking for an egg. After getting settled in the nesting box, she was quiet for about 20 minutes before she came back out and joined the rest of the flock in the yard.
Dennis and I could hardly contain our excitement; we were almost positive Rosie had laid her first egg. We walked over to the nesting box and opened it to discover a HUGE egg! When I say huge, I am not exaggerating. Check out the photo below. Rosie’s egg is on the left and on the right is a medium-sized egg from the grocery store. It was almost double in size.
Imagine our excitement when we cracked it open and discovered two beautiful yolks! What an accomplishment for Rosie. Not only was she the first to lay but her first egg was a double-yolker! We think she wanted to give us both our own yolk. She is a very thoughtful hen. You bet she got extra some extra treats for this!
We scrambled up that gorgeous egg and it was delicious! Since then, Rosie has been laying about one egg per day. As far as we can tell, she is still the only hen laying out of our seven.
There have been no more double yolkers but her eggs continue to be beautiful and delicious. They are a nice, creamy brown color and range from medium to large in size.
Having chickens continues to be such a great addition to our lives out here in the country. They are very sweet, silly, smart, and entertaining. Having eggs is a bonus and I will keep you updated as the others start laying. We are looking forward to seeing what colors and sizes the other hens will lay.
Here’s a video from my YouTube channel about Rosie’s first egg:
