The one about the chicken and the egg

It's been awhile since I last spoke about my chickens.

Since then we have gone from 4 to 5; when Snowdrop (a Bovans Silver) decided that eating was not for her, and had to be replaced with Snowdrop mark 2 (a Coral Reef) and Rosie (a Sussex Ranger).

We are now in-undated with eggs on a daily basis, and as you can see from these photographs, my girls all have their own style. Not only do they look beautiful, but it's nice to be able to match the egg to the chicken, as I can keep tabs on their laying.

From top left anti clockwise: laid by - Snowdrop, Violet, Rosie, Primrose

(Bluebell's egg colour is somewhere in between Snowdrop's and Rosie's colour)

From top left to right: Rosie, Bluebell and Snowdrop

middle: Violet

bottom: Primrose

Even now winter is upon us, we are still getting 4-5 eggs a day. So after initially giving some away, I have started selling them to our neighbours.

It means that the chickens earn their keep, and it keeps the neighbours in yummy 'cheap' free range eggs!

Of course, this offered me a chance to indulge in my new addiction - photoshop.

credits:

fonts: marketing script & ball park from dafont.com

starburst and dotty border from puglypixel.com

vintage chicken image from theoldentimes.com

tardy

2 months......2 months!

Don't get me wrong, there has been many a time when I have had something that I've wanted to blog about:

My birthday (which, indecently, was the day after my last post back in April), Thrifty finds galore, garden love, Hipstamatic appreciation, bargain floral high street finds and my lambswool CK Fair Isle Blanket to name a just a few.

But possibly the most exciting is my new chickadees. Bought with some of my birthday money, I finally took the plunge and they came to live with us exactly one month ago.

Meet the girls................

(from left to right) Bluebell- a Bluebelle, Primrose - a Heritage Skyline , Violet - a Maran Cou Cou and Snowdrop a - Bovans Silver.

They came from the lovely Kirsty at Hens 4 Homes and were only 16 weeks old when we got them, so I knew we might be in for a bit of a wait before we collected our first eggs.

So imagine my joy when I discovered this small but perfectly formed and gorgeous coloured egg two weeks after they arrived.

Laid by my favourite, Primrose (Skylines are a Cream Legbar cross and can lay either blue, green or pink eggs depending on the hen) I'm so pleased she is a greeny-blue egg layer! She is laying an egg a day now.....

.....and Violet laid her first little speckled egg yesterday and another today, so we are finally starting reap the rewards of all that feeding and fence building.

I have to say that I'm in love with them, I have managed to waste a good hour a day just watching them scratch about after I've let them out of the run when Ella and I get back from school. Ella loves them too, and she has scooping them up for a cuddle down to a fine art!

I shall leave you with some photos of my little patch of cottage garden, the Peony blooms (Sarah Bernhardt) have fully opened since I took this photo and I've had so many this year that I've cut some to enjoy indoors. I so love their raspberry ripple pom-pomness.