The Cackling Countess

Summer has been a time for visits from friends and family, trips to a beach, the mountains and a lake, and a revolving door of chickens. You'll remember that in the early spring, Hazel was in need of being a mama. Well, she got her wish in the form of five little chicks. She raised them well for several weeks and then, fickle hen that she is, was through with them. Fortunately the chicks were well-integrated into the flock by that point and they blended in well, even without the protection of Hazel.

As time went on and the little ones grew, we wondered if any of them would be roosters. Well, one morning while letting them out, a little white puffball, Gigi's Bubby, let loose with a weak crow that sounded eerily reminiscent of Peter Brady's singing during the puberty episode of the Brady Bunch. Shocked by what I heard, I waited and sure enough, she (um, he) did it again. Uh oh, Gigi's Bubby would have to go! No roosters allowed in St. Louis.

A few days later, we heard another weak crow in the back of the yard. We all gathered around Gigi's Bubby to watch him crow, but unless he became a ventriloquist overnight, it wasn't him. Following the sound of the next weak crow, we slowly turned our heads to find Uncle Poodle in the corner of the yard with an "I can do this too" look on his face. He too would have to go. Our thirteen chickens would be downsized to nine with two hens going to our friend and colleague, Dawn Meyer, and the two roosters going to one of Anna's neighbors in Indiana. And then there were nine.

Our two adolescents, Countess Cora and Duke, are getting to the point where they should be laying eggs. With each passing day, we approach the next boxes half expecting to see a new kind of egg. Yesterday, we heard a long, drawn-out egg laying song from one of the hens. The egg, we thought, must have been a doozy because the hen went on and on. Eventually I walked back to the coop and saw Countess Cora standing in the doorway of the coop singing her little heart out. Could it be? Her first egg? Really? Matt looked in the box...nothing. Apparently Countess Cora does not understand how the egg laying song works; hens are supposed to trumpet their success after laying an egg, not announce that sometime in the future they will begin to lay. The beautiful Countess was faking us out.

Later that same day, Matt went to collect eggs from the next boxes. Because of various factors, molting being the most obvious, our hens' egg production has been down lately. We've only been getting between 1-3 eggs per day. We are hopeful that our younger tandem will begin laying and boosting that number. In any case, Matt found four eggs in the nest boxes, one of which was a pinkish tan. Odd, he could not identify which hen laid that one; it was not one of the usual suspects. Could it have been Cora? Could she have gotten the order backwards and announced the she will be laying within the next hour, gone into the nest box, and laid her egg? Can chickens be dyslexic about time?

Could this be photographic evidence of Countess Cora's accomplishment? We have pieced together the clues and are cautiously optimistic that she has started laying and that this will be her egg color. Matt wants to wait a few more days to make sure, which is a wise idea. If the Countess is now laying, then it begs the question: What say you, Duke?