OK, so yesterday’s supposedly educated guesswork actually turned out to be far less accurate than our rather more blatant guesswork from before.  And I hold my own hands up to this, since my wife Jane stuck to the previous guesswork throughout and insisted she was right.  She was.  Mea culpa.

Fully aware that yesterday’s post might be howlingly inaccurate, I was determined to work out beyond any possible doubt exactly which hens were laying which eggs, even to the extent of concocting an elaborate plan involving an iPhone, a time-lapse photography app, and a lot of parcel tape to stick it to the pen out of beak range – the idea would be to take photos at sufficient intervals to get a good idea of who was in the hen house at particular times,  check for eggs every half an hour, and match up the photographic evidence with the physical kind.  But this plan was only practicable on a day that could be guaranteed rain-free, and we haven’t had many of those of late.

But today, I was able to match one specific hen to one specific colour quite by chance.  When I did my regular noon(ish) check, I found two of the nesting bays empty, and the third occupied by Pearl, who reacted much the same way that anyone would react if you burst in on them on a private moment.  So I discreetly shut the hen house, went to the kitchen, sliced up an apple, and tossed the pieces into the pen.  The other three chickens predictably went mental, but Pearl remained in situ, thus proving beyond any doubt that she was too busy to come out – under any other circumstances she’d have shot out to wonder what the fuss was about and whether she could get a share in it too.

And then, when she eventually emerged about ten minutes later, I checked the nesting bay again and found a small medium-brown egg.

Which simultaneously proved that:

1. Our assumption that Pearl was the first hen to start laying (based largely on her size and seniority) was correct;
2. She must have been the one to lay two eggs on Monday – presumably one literally first thing;
3. Yesterday’s guesswork was hilariously inaccurate.

As for the other two (excluding Ida, who’s still too young), we always were reasonably sure that Queenie was producing the pale brown eggs with darker speckles.  She’s essentially the same breed as Pearl (they’re both Rhode Island Red X Light Sussex chickens), which means that their eggs should be similar in colour – so even if Pearl had been laying the creamy white ones, that still meant that Queenie’s would be the pale brown ones, on account of being closest.  Further evidence came when we realised that the last remaining shop-bought eggs in the fridge were also produced by Columbian Blacktails like Queenie, and a quick comparison revealed the same speckly pattern.

Which means that Vi must be producing the creamy white eggs.

As an interesting footnote, although Pearl and Queenie’s eggs have remained similar in size (on the small side), Vi’s have steadily increased to the point where her third one would comfortably qualify as ‘large’ in a supermarket box.  We still had all three of her eggs, so here’s the evidence:

After Monday’s blatant guesswork, the chickens’ egg production over Tuesday and Wednesday has enabled us to draw some hopefully firmer conclusions about who’s laying what.  [UPDATE: Much of this turned out to be wildly inaccurate – see the corrected version posted the next day]  And, happily, it seems that all three of the hens that are actually laying (Ida is probably still three or four weeks too young) are producing their own distinctive colours.

We now think that it was actually Vi who started laying first, and that she’s the one producing the brown eggs – apparently her breed, the Bluebelle, is noted for its impressive productivity, which may also explain the two eggs on Monday.

The paler brown eggs with a faint speckle seem to be characteristic of Queenie’s breed, the Columbian Blacktail, so we’re attributing those to her for the moment.

Which leaves the creamy-white eggs – and it seems that that is indeed the colour that Pearl’s breed, the Sussex Star, is expected to lay.

So that’s what we’re assuming for now, though I suspect if we catch one of them actually in the act of laying we might have to have yet another rethink.

Egg production has continued at a similar breakneck pace – as of sundown yesterday (i.e. just three days into Week 4), they’d produced eight since Monday morning.  To put that in perspective, they’ve doubled the combined total of weeks 2 and 3 in less than half the time.