Hen Chronicles: Spring has sprung, at least for our flock!

Never mind the balmy weather and the warm breezes and the lack of snow and the muddy yards. The real proof that spring has sprung arrived yesterday.

One of our three hens laid an egg.

Technically, this first harbinger of the season occurred on Tuesday, March 8, when Snow, our Plymouth Rock, produced our first egg since the flock went on sabbatical at the end of November. Except that we never really saw Snow’s egg because it had no shell. (It happens!) The only proof of its existence was wet bedding in the nest box and a telltale yellow stain on Snow’s breast where the yolk somehow met its end.

But yesterday was different. The real deal. A perfectly formed brown egg which, judging by its size, was laid by either Nellie or Hope, our Rhode Island Reds. I found it in the nest box at 2 p.m., four hours after I spotted a seemingly preoccupied Nellie wandering in and out of the coop, as if on a mission that she wasn’t quite sure she had chosen to accept.

The first day of spring is still a week away, but members of the animal kingdom manage to track the change of seasons without having to consult a calendar.