Egg-citing!

The chooks ate my brocoli, an affront that was, quite frankly, a bit hard to swallow, seeing as they had never deigned to lay me even one itsy-bitsy egg.

All is forgiven though as the onset of the warm spring-ish weather has tipped some deeply-rooted switch and at least two of them are now laying regularly. For a bantam, regularly, is one wee egg every second day. One of them however has gone into over-achiever mode and laid three days in a row. I know, because the clucking associated with laying is still enough of a novelty to send me racing out the back-door to check on who has perched herself on one of the boxes.

Hopefully the other two will follow suit soon. Four bantams should give us two bantam eggs per day which is equivalent to one large egg per day. That's plenty, in general we only eat eggs on weekends and for occasional baking. The eggs themselves are delicious and Andrew from Andrews stock feeds in Sydney Rd tells me that they will increase slightly in size after the first 25 or so have been laid.

The chooks eat Andrew's organic layer pellets, seeds, kitchen scraps and the lawn, not to mention the occasional broccoli. They also get to scratch throughout the garden feasting on worms, slaters and other delicious things. I'm growing some comfrey from seed at the moment to plant around the garden. I'm hoping this will a.) distract them from broccoli and other vegetables and b.) entice them to spend more time scratching under the fruit trees.