Straight from the chicken's butt!

The first egg!

I am pleased to announce that one of my hens has started laying! Several days ago I noticed that when I would reach my hand down to Mrs. Kravitz the hen she would crouch down and be still. This behavior confused me as all of my hens usually just run away. I started thinking that the chicken had just become inordinately scared of me because she has so much trouble with my cat targeting and chasing her, including one instance in which the cat scared her so much she shoved herself through the fence into the neighbor's dog yard where we had to rescue her. I looked up my question on Google and turned up info about the squatting behavior.

I said to myself, "oh shit!" I didn't even have a nest box in my coop yet, and I keep all the chickens separate from the coop during the day anyway. I didn't want them to start laying just anywhere. I read that free range chickens will usually go back to their coop to lay.

Right away I opened up the coop, found a five gallon bucket to serve as a nest box, shoved a little hay into it, stabilized the bucket with some rocks and bricks. All this time, Mrs. Kravitz was in the coop watching me and looking impatient. When I finally got things settled she went right in there and started rearranging hay before she just sat down and stayed for about an hour and a half. At the end of that time I went out to find that pretty brown speckled egg above! Seems like I got that settled just in the nick of time!

Since that first egg I've been leaving the chickens to roam the yard during the day so that they have access to the coop. Every day since Tuesday there's been another egg. I ate the first one, but there are currently three waiting in the refrigerator. Here's the beauty I found today.

In the nest!

In the hand!

 Mrs. Kravitz is a red sex link, so I think she has some Rhode Island Red in her. I hear that this breed matures quickly, so maybe that's why she's the first to lay. So far each egg has been really consistent: all brown with tiny white speckles and weighing 53 grams.

Mrs. Kravitz

Four gals.

Ginger the buff orp.

I can't wait until the Ameraucanas start laying. I'm ready to see some blue or green. This weekend the hubs and I are planning to fortify the back fence and a few spots on the side fence so that the ladies can be more securely contained in our yard.