Last year, our little flock’s winter break came to an end on March 11. That's when one of our hens laid the first egg of 2017.
This year, the return to work began a day earlier. Nellie, one of our two Rhode Island Reds, took to the nest box yesterday morning and left behind the offering that’s pictured below.
Size wise, it isn’t very impressive, coming in at no more than two inches in length, and perhaps a bit shorter than that. In fact, it may be the smallest egg we’ve seen in almost six years of keeping chickens. But it’s a clean, unblemished, hard-shelled egg.
More importantly, it’s a harbinger of better days to come as spring draws near.
We’ve encountered this sort of thing before when the hens resume laying after a hiatus of several months. It may take a little while for their "equipment" to ramp back up. But we haven’t cracked the egg yet, so only time will tell if it’s just a tiny egg or something else -- what’s sometimes called a fairy egg, which is a small egg with no yolk. Fairy eggs are typically laid by pullets (young hens) that are new to the game, or by older hens that are slowing down. Nellie and Hope turned five in January, so they are neither young nor ancient.
“Fairy eggs occur when the hen's body begins to form an egg before a yolk is released from her oviduct,” according to fresheggsdaily.com. “Therefore, only the white (albumen) is encased inside the shell.” That’s the scientific explanation, but folks had different ideas in the Middle Ages. Back then, yolk-less eggs were known as witch eggs (because they were thought to be satanic) or cock eggs (because they were thought to have been laid by roosters).
As a species, we may not be as advanced as we'd like to believe, but in some ways, at least, we are more enlightened than our ancestors.
This year, the return to work began a day earlier. Nellie, one of our two Rhode Island Reds, took to the nest box yesterday morning and left behind the offering that’s pictured below.
Size wise, it isn’t very impressive, coming in at no more than two inches in length, and perhaps a bit shorter than that. In fact, it may be the smallest egg we’ve seen in almost six years of keeping chickens. But it’s a clean, unblemished, hard-shelled egg.
More importantly, it’s a harbinger of better days to come as spring draws near.
We’ve encountered this sort of thing before when the hens resume laying after a hiatus of several months. It may take a little while for their "equipment" to ramp back up. But we haven’t cracked the egg yet, so only time will tell if it’s just a tiny egg or something else -- what’s sometimes called a fairy egg, which is a small egg with no yolk. Fairy eggs are typically laid by pullets (young hens) that are new to the game, or by older hens that are slowing down. Nellie and Hope turned five in January, so they are neither young nor ancient.
“Fairy eggs occur when the hen's body begins to form an egg before a yolk is released from her oviduct,” according to fresheggsdaily.com. “Therefore, only the white (albumen) is encased inside the shell.” That’s the scientific explanation, but folks had different ideas in the Middle Ages. Back then, yolk-less eggs were known as witch eggs (because they were thought to be satanic) or cock eggs (because they were thought to have been laid by roosters).
As a species, we may not be as advanced as we'd like to believe, but in some ways, at least, we are more enlightened than our ancestors.
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| A witch egg? Or just plain tiny? |
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