Colour coding

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.