All of these eggs came from my hens. The quarter gives you a sense of size: The three darker ones are pretty standard-sized. That lighter one, which I found in the nesting box last week, is roughly the size of a duck egg. Not surprisingly, it had two yolks — both of which were larger than average.
Double-yolk eggs are more common than you might imagine, but that one is the biggest I’ve ever seen. Poor hen … laying an egg that big can’t have been a comfortable job.
Incidentally, the girls are doing a magnificent job of smoothing out the garden where Ron spaded this weekend. They’ve broken up all the dirt clods and reduced the soil to fine powder, all while happily consuming all the bugs, grubs, and weed seeds they can find. Fine little gardeners, my girls….
On a totally unrelated note, I rode my bike home from work tonight for the first time in a couple of weeks. Despite the lag between rides, this one was easier than the last, even with the steep hill in the middle. (The train was blocking 33rd West Avenue, so I had to take the overpass behind Ollie’s, which involves a VERY steep grade.) The messenger bag worked out well, especially when Linda asked me to run by the post office for her on the way home.
Emily
Red Fork Hippie 
We’re hoping for brown eggs from our flock, once they get big enough to do anything besides squabble. There are several nice looking barred birds; Mom always called them domineckers but I don’t know what their official breed would be. There are several that are probably Buff Orpingtons–extremely curious and daring, large-breasted birds. They are starting to get their “pantaloons” now. They don’t much like being moved from tub to tub during the cleaning process, but they’re at least not totally freaked out about it. I’m going to have to pick up another waterer. One of the three that we bought is defective and you can’t get the lid/serving dish to screw on right. It is probably going to drench them if they stage a fight over who’s next in line, but I don’t have a choice tonight. It’s too late to run out to Rural King and pick up a replacement. We have them in the barn now in the old bathroom that’s out there. Your dad moved a dozen of them into the big crate we got to house Jason when you visited a few years ago. It makes a great chicken pen. The remaining dozen is split between two big clear plastic tubs with chicken wire over the tops. My arms look like I’ve been fighting with cats after I do a cleaning session for them. It’s not the chickens that are scratching me all up, but that #%&@ wire… It will be good to have them outdoors so they won’t need such close attention. I’m hoping they can go out in a couple of weeks.
Your “domineckers” are barred Rocks. Great foragers. Ours pecks at me every time I put my hand in the tractor, but she’s not being mean — she just thinks I might have a bug in my hand for her, and she’s looking for it.
Someone gave my sister and I chicks one year for Easter … fortunately we lived on a small farm so it wasn’t an issue. It turned out we had a hen and a rooster. The hen was a Barred Rock that was a prodigious layer, almost an egg a day. The rooster (a Leghorn) became my pet. He thought I was a large, strange hen. I’d go down the driveway to get the mail and when I got halfway back, he’d run to me, fly up on my shoulder and pull on my hair. If I laid down under the maple tree to read, he’d jump up on my knee and do 360 degree sweeps to watch out for predators (I guess). Oh, I miss him (no one else does, though, since he used to attack everyone else).
Those eggs look perfect. I need to arrange a time to drop by and snag some. I’ll e-mail you.
I tried to leave a comment on your last post about the ice cream man, but my work filter blocked it — something to do with weapons, I guess because of the use of the word “bomb”. What it blocks is so random.
They are beautiful…as a now urban-dweller I am in awe of how lovely they are. hugs, K
why are they so shiny?
They were still wet from being washed, as I’d just brought them out of the henhouse.