First Egg Stories

"Last week we asked you to share some stories of your ""first eggs"". Here's the first 'clutch'! Thanks to all of you who shared! And it's not too late to send in your first egg story. We'd been told that chickens start laying at between four and six months, so even before the fourth month came around, we started hoping for our first egg. Maybe our chicks would be overachievers. We'd had the birds for 5 1/2 month when it came time for us to go on vacation. We had someone housesitting, and I declare we weren't gone four hours when we got a text message with a photo. We had our first egg, and I had missed it! I felt like the mom who waits and waits for her child's first step, and it finally happens - with grandma! Anyhow, since then, the kids have each found eggs. The very first one we found, we opened the nest box, and the egg was still warm to the touch. It still had bloom on that was just about dried. It was a great experience for the kids to feel - and for their mama. ---Laura M. My family just got chickens this year and it has been quite it an experience watching them grow up from baby chicks to free ranging hens! My grandmother is the one who spends the most time them. She gets up early in the morning and opens their pen to feed them and let them out. It’s funny because all the chickens know her voice. She can be across the yard and call out, “Here chicky- chicky” and all 21 hens come running towards her! The hens just started laying a couple of weeks ago. They had started making a really loud racket in the morning and we couldn’t figure out why at first. We thought maybe one of our cats or some other animals were bothering them. One morning after the general noise had quieted down, my grandmother walked in with an egg! All the uproar was apparently just part of their laying ritual. Now every morning the hens have a race to see who can get to their favorite laying spots first. The first hen gets to lay while the others stand in line and make a lot of noise! ---Candace H. This isn't a first egg story, but it's still funny. A long time ago we bought some fresh eggs from Hayley. We had them in a bowl on our kitchen counter; they were so pretty! Anyone, late one night, we heard a peeping noise from the direction of the eggs. It sounded like one of the eggs was getting ready to hatch! I'm definitely a city girl, and was terrified that I was going to have a little chick running around my kitchen. I fully considered calling Cherry up and telling her to get over to my house and rescue me from this evil chick. But I got brave and decided I would figure out which egg was chirping, and put it in a box so it would be contained when the chick was born. I would move an egg, and wait until the next peep, then move the next one. I got down to one egg and isolated it as the culprit. Trouble was, the peeping continued. Apparently, we had a mouse! The next day I called Cherry to tell her our story, and she laughed. ""Well if that *had* been chick it would have been an immaculate conception, because we don't have a rooster!"" ---Karen A. When I was a little girl, our grandmother gave my little brother and me two chicks for Easter. Our dad built a coop in the backyard. The chicks weren't full grown and hadn't started laying when one day, my brother got sick. He began to cry that he wanted an egg. My dad was a pastor, and had taken our car and gone visiting for the day. It wasn't as if we didn't have food, but my brother wanted an egg, and I felt sorry for him. I prayed, ""Dear God, please help my brother get an egg."" You've guessed the rest of the story. A bit later when I went out to find the chickens, I found an egg - the first one. "