Agnes and Chickadee, we’re going to call her (assuming pullet unless surprised around 8 weeks or so…) Dee Dee for the song Chickadees sing, are firmly ensconced in the shed. As far as I can tell, Agnes is still sitting on the other eggs. Altho when I got home from work yesterday and checked on them she wasn’t, instead she was keeping DeeDee warm out of the nest and the eggs were slightly cool to the touch. However, she could have just been up for her daily feed and poop and I surprised her when I opened the door. I will continue to be optimistic as she was sitting this morning with no signs of having been off again since yesterday. Hopefully she’ll hatch at least one more - otherwise, Murphy’s Law says that DeeDee will learn to crow.

 In other news, it seems that Pru has become a complete free loader. She’s backed off the laying since her round with the vet. I thought it would pick back up but she’s been holding steady at maybe 2 eggs a week with long breaks between for a month now. And we haven’t had an egg since mid-week last week. Seems she may be taking on the responsibilities of a rooster, guarding the flock, announcing dawn, etc. She’s been loud in the mornings starting around 6:15 am - a couple of the neighbors have mentioned hearing her, but so far no one is actually complaining. Hopefully she won’t actually learn to crow…

I’m happy to keep her for now even with no eggs to pay for her keep. She’s pretty and I feel a responsibility towards her since she can’t likely be rehomed with the on-going leg mite problem looming. Oh well. Penny and Lucy are keeping us in a dozen eggs a week and that’s plenty for our needs right now. Agnes will go back to laying later this summer and we’ll hopefully have DeeDee to give us some tiny banty eggs as well.

My goal is eggs for us, any to give away are a bonus. We’ve been behind lately on eggs with our busy weekends (we usually “make” breakfast on weekends) and my being sick. So I gave away 18 eggs yesterday in 6 egg batches to a friend a work, another friend of ours and our neighbor. That still left 15 for us with 2 a day coming. Perfect.