Whoa Black Betty (Bam-a-lam)

About a month ago we added two new additions to our family: Betty and Rachel. Owen picked them out himself. Betty is a Black Australorp, and Rachel is a Barred Rock. Betty even came with papers certifying her breed and sex, just in case we wanted to show her. (mmm, probably not). We decided to get chickens because we thought it'd be nice to have fresh eggs. Another plus is that they are easy to care for, and something that Owen could be very involved in raising. He has been great about feeding and watering them daily. He really enjoys these cluckers!

Anyway, I was told when I got these girls that Betty was already laying and that Rachel would start laying within two months. We brought them home, and anxiously awaited our first egg... Fast forward 3.5 weeks, still no eggs. BUMMER!

Then this past weekend, we went to Mom and Dad's, Friday and Saturday to celebrate Dad's b-day. We came home to TWO eggs!! The thing was that they were teeny weeny. I called my dad, the closest thing that I have to a chicken expert, albeit, probably not that close. :) He figured that Rachel (the young pullet) must have started laying and that was why the eggs were so small. That made sense I figured; little chicken, little eggs. That still left the question as to why Betty still hadn't resumed laying...

Fast forward again to this morning. Owen was super excited about getting to eat his first eggs from his chickens. I took pictures to memorialize the event!

Owen shows off the first two eggs!

Yummy omelet

Delicious

Pleased with a farm fresh breakfast

All of that was good and well, but the thing that I noticed when I cracked the eggs in the bowl was that they both had a white circle on their yolks with a bullseye like appearance. My immediate reaction was that they appeared to be fertilized. I called my Chicken Expert AKA "DAD" again to see what he thought. He confirmed that the white circles would usually indicate a fertilized egg. I google researched the matter further and from all of the results that I found, I am about 95% convinced that those eggs were indeed fertilized.

So guess what that means... If I have a fertilized egg, I must have a... ROOSTER! ACCCKKK.

My next step was to call the lady that I bought the chickens from. She assured me that there was almost no way that "Betty" could be a rooster. She was "guaranteed" to be a hen. She told me that I could bring back my alleged rooster, or seperate the two birds and confirm who is actually laying. On any account, I am supposed to call her back next week with my findings.

Here is a close-up picture of the suspect eggs. It's really not a great picture of the bullseye effect because of the glare, but you can at least see the white circle on yolk on the right side.

Suspect eggs

The most unfortunate part of this whole event is that I've spent a good portion of my day today fiddling with, photographing, cooking, researching, calling, and now blogging about these silly eggs.

The fortunate thing is that if the worst thing that I have to worry about is whether or not my chicken is a rooster, things are going pretty smoothly :)