Legbar Eggs!

For those of you who have been following the saga of the Cream Legbar chicks since they first hatched in March, I’m proud to announce that the cycle of life, egg to chicken to egg, reached a milestone this morning when I found the first little pullet eggs.  I found not one, but three eggs!  The mystery is, are these eggs from three pullets, or did one pullet start laying three days ago and I’m just now finding the eggs?  Until I find more proof, I’m going to vote for the latter.  I check nest boxes diligently, several times a day, but the little pullet(s) that laid these eggs is a novice egg layer and still a little confused as to how it is all supposed to work.  I found all three eggs in the dust bath!  I am hoping that the responsible party will figure out that dust baths are for bathing and nest boxes are for eggs, and I’m also hoping that the other Legbar pullets don’t follow this example.

All along, I’ve been expecting blue eggs from these hens, so was surprised when the eggs turned out to be sort of aqua—very close to the color of the eggs I get from my Easter Eggers.  So then I checked the Cream Legbar Standard of Perfection.  Interestingly, while the very first sentence describes the Cream Legbar hens as “prolific layers of blue eggs,” further down under “Economic Qualities”, the egg shell color is described as “blue or green”.  And the British Cream Legbar Standard describes egg colors of blue, green, or olive!  So while the first three eggs are not the blue I expected, they meet the standard and they are, in fact, very pretty.

If you would like to read the story of the babies from the early days of March when I was picking out a broody hen to be their surrogate mom up to the present, here’s a linked list of the blogs in chronological order:

March 2:  Broody Hens—Will the Legbar babies have a fluffy black mom or a fluffy white mom?

March 3: Broody Hens Again: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Broodiness But Were Afraid To Ask—Courtney amps up her broodiness and becomes the chosen mom.

March 21:  Baby Chicks! Coming Soon To a Coop Near You!—The brooder coop is ready!  Courtney is waaay ready!  All we need is baby chicks.

March 29:  Driving Across State Lines to Pick Up Chicks—The chicks hatch—we drive to Madison, Wisconsin to pick them up.

April 4:  The Chicks -  Latest Update—The chicks get names.

April 12:  The Chicks Are 16 Days Old—The chicks already have cute li’l wing feathers.

April 20:  Fine Poultry Art & The Chicks Go Out—The chicks leave the broody coop and meet their new coop-mates.

April 26:  Coop Update—The chicks celebrate their 1-month birthday.

May 3:  A May Day at the Chicken Ranch—The Legbar chicks, Bonnie, Marissa, Nicky, and Paulette, celebrate their 6-week birthday.  In chicken-years, they’re teenagers now!

May 11:  The Legbar Chicks Go Into the Great Wide World—Courtney takes the chicks outside for the first time and then steps back a little from her motherly duties to go back to work—she starts laying eggs again.

May 17:  Coop Update—The Legbars, like teens everywhere, hang out.

July 4:  4^th of July at the Hipster Hen Ranch—The Legbar teens are growing up.  Courtney becomes an empty nester.

August 16:  Coop News—Slightly Out of Date—Some pictures of my beautiful Legbar pullets—all grown up!

And of course there will be many more posts right here on this blog about the Legbar ladies and all the other chickens!