Am I a grandma?

Our First Egg!

What an exciting day!  Kylie brought me this egg that she found in the chicken coop.  I held it up to the keyboard of my laptop for a reference point.  It is itty-bitty and oh so cute.  I'm not sure I will be able to use it as food.  Is it ok to save the eggs just to look at?  It feels a little like eating my grandchildren.  I'm sure I will get over it when I need it.  It's just kind of strange to think about it.

After I took the picture, I ran out to try to figure out which chicken laid it.  I started by trapping all of the chickens in the coop (since the run is to short for me to get into it), climbed in there with them, and began examining the chickens' vents  (the exit for all things coming out of the chicken) of whose gender I am not completely certain.  I found that several appeared to be ready to lay eggs (according to what I read in a book), but found no evidence (I was looking for a trace of blood or something -- since there was a little bit of blood on the egg) that the egg had come from any of them.  Then just for the heck of it I checked the chickens that I am fairly certain are roosters.  I thought I had figured out (from looking at the vents) how to tell which ones were roosters, so then I examined the others and found that they all had what I thought were boy parts.

At this point I was totally confused to say the very least!  So I ran in the house to ask my close friend, Google.  You have to be very careful typing in things like "sex of chickens" and "chicken genitalia".  (Just FYI.)  All the information said the same thing.  You tell the gender of a chicken by three main things:  1--roosters crow, 2 -- roosters have spurs on their legs, and 3 -- roosters have more pronounced combs.  That doesn't help me!  I know four of the chickens are roosters.  They crow.  Their combs are more pronounced than the other chickens, too.  The problem comes in the fact that most of my chickens are different breeds and I don't know their ages, so how do I know whose comb just hasn't started to develop yet?  I decided to let the spurs on the legs be the determining factor.  (The lady on the You Tube video said that no matter what the breed of chicken, all roosters have spurs.)  I went back out to the coop and trapped all the chickens in the coop again and climbed in.  I captured each one starting with the known roosters so I could be sure what I was looking for.  The first rooster had spurs.  The next rooster did not.  I looked again and felt up and down the poor chickens legs.  Then I found something that might be considered a spur in its beginning stage.  I worked my way through all of my chickens.  They all had spurs!  Either I am the worst chicken examiner, or someone is messing with me!

I give up.  I'm just going to stake out the chicken coop and see who lays the eggs.  What do you take to a chicken stake out?  Donuts?

I have probably traumatized the poor things so badly they won't lay for several days again.

As summer is winding to a close (thank goodness -- bring on the routine) I just wanted to post some of the fun reminders of the good times we had this summer.

Bear Lake -- Pioneer Day

Ahhh

The infamous beach ninja!

"I am your father."

Ammon's first sunburn! See what happens when you are too old to let Mom put on your sunscreen.

Kylie's Last Year at Oakcrest

Swim Camp

The Man of My Dreams

Nostalgia

The man of my dreams' dives may not have been pretty, but he really made a splash on the dive class (and anyone anywhere near the pool.)


Last week our family spent five nights at Green Canyon Hot Springs near Rexburg, Idaho at swim camp. It was great! My little warrior and my special girl took swimming lessons and passed level 5 and they also took the diving class. The man of my dreams and my scholar were in the diving class as well. My princess and I just swam. It was lovely! No cell phone service. No internet. Nothing but family and lots of swimming. My scholar had a hard time determining whether he was being punished or not.