Pullet Eggs

The younger generation recently has begun to lay a few eggs. Brownie, pictured above, laid her first today: bantam eggs are small, pullet eggs are always small, Brownie’s egg was baby-sized, pale tan, and elongated with a pointed, almost ice-cream cone shape. Her papa could be any of two or three roos. From one of these she got her iridescent black/green color. From her white, fluffy Cochin mother, Princess, she got her downright short legs (of course, Lincoln, commenting on leg length, noted that they need only to be long enough to reach the ground). Our gorgeous young rooster, Joe, her stepbrother, reminds me of Ted Baxter–handsome, colorful, good voice, but a little slow in “getting it.” When kitchen scraps are thrown to the chickens, someone else will steal his chosen tidbit before he can pick it up. But it makes no difference to little Brownie whether he has picked it up or not. Her low-down legs are so fast that–several times a day--she will grab food right out of Joe’s beak as she races by. There are plenty of sharp little ladies around who can make a fool out of a big, good-looking male before he has any idea what has happened, leaving him with a Joe, the rooster, blank look on his face. “Hey, what happened?”