Chickens: Part 3

Eggs from the girls!

After months and months of waiting, it finally happened. We got our first egg! I wasn't there for the discovery, but I got a picture via text message. We were so excited—I could go so far as comparing it to feeling your baby kick for the first time. Pride swelled having watched these chicks grow up and produce their own eggs. Nobody ate the egg. We just stared at it for a few days. Finally we cooked it up (tiny little thing). Adam, Hudson and I each had one bite and it was totally delicious! Being the color person that I am, I was excited about the beautiful golden color of the yolk. When we started having more eggs, every morning was like an easter egg hunt.

After a while we started to hear more loud sounds from the coop. In addition there were some very perky feathers on our Marilyn. We had had our suspicions, but one day we took a good long look at our lead girl and confirmed in fact that she was a rooster. This got a little awkward with our kids when the rooster behavior began. But, actually it opened the door for some conversations that needed to happen. Our kids will forever replace "the birds and the bees" with "the chickens". We still call him Marilyn. Anna calls him, "Marilhim", but old habits are hard to break and I think it's kind of funny.

Today I walked outside and I just about freaked. I did freak actually. The girls were all standing by the brush pile in our front woods and not six feet away from them was a coopers hawk. It was just sitting there surveying the situation. Hard to believe the hawk could even consider taking one of the girls; right now with all their winter feathers they must be three times its size. I looked at Marilyn and wanted to make some chicken alarm noises, wishing I could summon them to their secure position in the front pine tree, but I managed to run out (with Hudson) and the hawk flew up into a tree. I still had to make more of a fuss to get it to fly away. Bold thing. Crazy that was sitting right with the girls almost like it was one of them.

I know Marilyn would have gotten into it with the hawk. He is a good rooster and recently has grown into a protector/provider sort of fellow. While my kids can no longer pick him up or sit on the ground by him (that was a sad realization) he watches over his girls. I have watched him call the girls and pitch food to them before he eats himself. What a good chap.