fresh eggs

What a treat to go find warm, fresh eggs each morning! The kids LOVE finding eggs in the nesting boxes. It's like a daily Easter egg hunt. Well, sort of. The fake eggs worked like a charm and the hens now lay their eggs reliably in their little nesting boxes. Now that they've figured out the purpose of the boxes, they keep them nice and clean, which is funny because they have no such scruples about pooping everywhere else. It cracks me up to find them sitting like plump, self-important matrons on piles of faux eggs, keeping them toasty warm. 

Three of the hens have been laying regularly for almost a month (yielding ~2 eggs per day). Baby Zebra just laid her first egg today to great acclaim. (Her adorable fluffy Victorian bum is front and center in the above picture.) Nothing yet from the leader of the pack, the fearless Ameraucana Puffy-Cheeks (the first name is her breed). This crazy bird has been known to fly up to the top of our six-foot fence and wobble along like Anne Shirley on the schoolhouse roof. She shook out her wings as if to fly off to the greener pastures of our neighbor's yard and scared me half to death. Getting her down was a delicate operation. Maybe she's having too much fun to settle down and start laying those blue eggs we've been waiting for.

Daniel has been winterizing the coop--sealing the roof and adding plexiglass to the window, plus installing an elaborate thermostat heating system that will switch on and off as needed. The hens are supposedly hardy down to between 20 and 32 degrees, depending on breed and size.

We've had a few nights down into the low 30s already, plus two light snowstorms (one in early October, one this morning), so it's time to get ready for the wild fluctuations of Colorado winters.