Hooks and Hens

HAPPY NEWS!!!! My 6 month old chickens just started laying!!! To fully understand my excitement, you need to know the family tree of the new-laying hens. 🙂

Here is Bibi, my very first California White rooster that we got from IFA in my first batch of chickens several years ago. We gave him to a local farm.

Well, he was bred with a Barred Rock (I believe). I collected a few eggs and hatched out his baby in my homemade incubator (seen below).

We kept one of the chicks that hatched, and we named her Lady Cluck. So she is a California White x Barred Rock. Here she is (the one on the left):

Several months later, I got some FBCM eggs from a friend on backyardchickens.com and hatched out all roos. I kept one and named him RUFIO (seen below)! Marans are famous for their deep chocolate brown eggs with uber-dark speckles.

Well, I bred Lady Cluck and Rufio and got two hens out of the hatch… The Twins. They are the two with the light combs. (Their brother triplet got processed a few weeks ago. RIP):

Today, after 6 months since the twins hatched, almost to the day… one of them finally laid their FIRST EGG!!!!!!!!!

 
Now that you know the genetics, let me explain the egg characteristics from the mom and dad of the twins. Lady Cluck (mom) laid a light tan egg, and Rufio (dad) came from a mega-dark egg. I was very interested to see what The Twins would lay. Would the egg be dark like dad, or light like mom? You’re about to find out!

The egg on the left is a store XL egg, the middle egg is Lady Cluck’s egg, and the egg on the right is The Twins’ first egg. It is an almost smack-dab-in-the-middle hue of the tan egg and a super dark marans egg (eggs are so difficult to photograph… the real color is a bit darker than shown here).

The next day, I got another egg equal in size and color to the first (presumably from the same hen).

Two days after that, it happened. I got my speckled egg I was hoping for! I believe it is from the other Twin. Here it is:

Thumbs up for speckled eggs. 🙂