Six eggs! Is it spring?

OK, five eggs, because the two at right are probably from LBH, so one must be from yesterday. Unless one is a guinea egg, though they are usually fair-weather layers. Still, this is great! We've had no eggs, then one, then two or three – but this is a serious haul. I'm pleased.

The birds are generally kinda crappy looking, without dust to bathe in, and being confined by snow to the chicken house and yard with all those barbarian guineas. Days are getting longer and it's warmer out so they boobled around the yard and garden fence a bit today. No one has wanted to free range in the dead of winter, though we leave the gate open in the daytime. They're looking forward to getting greens and bugs. Me, too.

From front, Light Hairdo, Sooty Hairdo and their mom, Dovey. Sooty lays
pale blue eggs, and her sister lays pink ones. Dovey's are biggest, and bluest.

The boys. No name, top left, the sooty roo, left, and Graham.

That's Festunio the rooster, on the left. He looks a lot like The Predator. The hen is the middle gold bird.

I've been trying to figure out how many chickens we have. It's not easy. We have the five hens I got from some weirdos (Foggy, LBH and the three gold ones). Dovey and her two hairdos. We traded the mean hen, and two died, and two pullets disappeared (we blame the neighbor cat). So that's eight hens. Six eggs a day is probably as good as we'll do, unless the bathroom pullet recovers and rejoins the flock. Or somebody goes broody and hatches more chicks. And roosters? Graham and his striped boys Festunio, Cecile and the unnamed fellow, plus the sooty roo (formerly Elke, the white chick). Five roosters. That's four too many, but we don't eat them so we'll put up with them unless they start fighting, then will put them on Craig's List and someone else will eat them. Keep the peace, boys!

Dovey's dad was a big Polish rooster, which explains the big birds and silly hairdos, and little Graham has supplied the stripes and fabulous tail feathers. 

So we have 13 chickens. Plus the little bathroom pullet. One of these days I'll have to count the guineas.

Still no tomato seeds.