If I hadn’t seen Rosie myself, I wouldn’t have believed the leghorn chickens in our little home flock were laying eggs yet.  Other hens laid their eggs in the nest box, then made sure everyone within earshot knew it.

Not Rosie. She just calmly walked by us one day, nonchalantly laid a beautiful white egg on the grass, and kept right on grazing. Rosie, Vera, Grey,Violet and Trouble are the only white-egg layers among our 19 hens. The rest lay in shades of brown, blue and green.

I kept my eyes open for white eggs for days, but never saw any more. She wouldn’t have just laid one egg and then stopped, right? We began to suspect that the white-eggers were  laying somewhere secret out in the woods or meadow nearby. Rosie and Vera, the leghorns, can fly out of the 6′ fenced yard, so we can’t control where they go.

Yesterday, I finally got my timing right to watch Rosie as she wandered along side the garage. A minute later, she tucked herself into a cozy, protected spot between a plastic storage bin, stacked flowerpots, and the garage.

I figured she’d lay her egg and move along. But she stayed. And stayed. Uh-oh. That meant there was more than one egg and she was trying to hatch them. We’re just getting used to the chickens and aren’t quite ready to start again with new batch of chicks.

Hours later, Rosie finally hopped up and left. We carefully moved the storage bin to see her stash. We were shocked to discover a collection of 17 eggs!

Most were white. A few were brown, so maybe the leghorns had clearly talked some other hens into laying there too. I had a hearty laugh. Here, I’d been pleased with how many eggs we’d been getting, and we’d missed 17 eggs. I guess I still have a lot to learn!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Chickens, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.