At last! Eggs! When I got back to town Tuesday evening, my Silver Phoenix had finally started laying! She laid these four beautiful eggs, which Bill and I had for lunch in a sandwhich Wednesday. The eggs are small, but the yolks are normal-sized, which is just about perfect unless you plan to make meringue :)

Eggs are remarkable - these had been sitting in 70-100 degrees for 3-4 days, and were perfectly fresh. Even if they were fertilised - which is doubtful, as I don't think my boys are that advanced yet - they wouldn't start to develop until the hen started to brood them. What a perfect food!

I took them when she wasn't watching, and Wednesday evening when I went to get the next egg, I saw she had laid several feet away in another spot. Poor thing, probably hoping to avoid the 'predator' stealing her eggs. Ah, well, I hope to let her go broody sometime, but not just yet. Not sure what I'd do with any more male chicks anyway.

Tomorrow (well, later today I guess) I am going to try to hook up with a local breeder and get a couple more hens to improve my sex ratio. I'm thinking some brown eggers (Maran and Welsumer) would be nice, and a blue-egg-laying Sumatra/South American cross so I can finally have a black hen as I had planned :) I'm still undecided about placing one of the Sumatra boys, as they are more beautiful every day and are not very loud and seem to get on well with each other. They may grow more aggressive as they get older, of course. I may wait and see.    ¶ 2:36 AM