I’m battling some creepin’ crud – my annual winter-season head cold/bronchitis combination – hence the reason you haven’t seen me around here much. I’ve only had the wherewithal to do what is absolutely necessary these past few days, and I’m still not feeling great, but I couldn’t stand letting another day pass without sharing something from the farm with you.
First, check out these egg photos. I wanted to give an idea of the wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors we encounter in the nest boxes every day. Although we do have quite a bit of variety in our cartons, if you are one of our egg customers, you’d never even see some of these, because they are so irregular, and we keep those for ourselves, so that the eggs that go to market are more consistent. The smallest (on the right) are laid by Bantams and pullets – hens who are still ramping up to their full egg size. 
The second egg from the right is really more lovely than the photo tells – light olive with specks. I still am not sure which hen is laying this one, but it keeps growing in size, so it is not from a Bantam, like the slightly pinkish hued one to its right is. The sort of mahogany brown speckled egg in the center is from one of our Welsummer ladies, and the blue to its left is, of course, from one of our Easter Eggers (Americauna). The gargantuan egg on the far left is something we see from time to time – it was a double yolker, so what happened is that a hen made an error in laying, because that ultimately should have been two separate eggs.
The Bantam eggs are really kind of amazing to us – when you look at this diminutive little bird, and look, proportionately, at the size of the egg she creates, it’s a definite “Wow Moment.” If the standard breed hens eggs were equally proportionate, they’d probably be the size of a baseball!
I suspect that’s exactly what the hen who laid the gargantuan egg was aiming for, too! Seeing it in a perspective comparison to one of the regular large eggs should provide some idea of its scale. Wow. That hen must have been sore afterward.
The flock gives us plenty of interesting behaviors to watch every day. One of my great delights is hearing the Denizli crows. And I don’t just mean the roosters. Sure, they are doing the majority of the crowing, but it’s worth noting that this breed produces hens that crow, as well, and we’ve heard those girls giving it a go from time to time. The roosters do not sustain their crow as long as the Death Metal Rooster (which was our inspiration for hatching Denizli chicks out) but we didn’t expect them to, either. And I suppose it’s because they hear Sam, Gonzo, Billy Badass, and Picard’s signature notes, but at least one of the Denizli roos has a multi-syllabic crow, which we didn’t expect. Quite frequently, it sounds, to me anyway, like the opening notes of the theme from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” So of course, I always feel compelled to complete the sequence. I’ve had difficulty getting them to crow when I have the camera with me, but finally, this morning, I managed to capture them on video. You’ll see both Denizli boys wandering about, but only one is doing the crowing. One of the Denizli hens is also sticking close by to them over by the waterer. You’ll hear a decent crow at the start of the video, but watch through the entire 55 seconds, because toward the end, you’ll hear a better one.
Well, I’m off to get some more rest and fluids, and hopefully evict this virus post-haste! I’m reading another Joel Salatin book, this time, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. Sounds right up my alley, right?
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