Wooden Egg Replica (l); Jelly Bean Egg (r)

We continue to be flummoxed by the flock.  If you can really describe four hens as a ‘flock’.  We haven’t had one single egg from them in months.  One did molt which might have explained her lack of laying.  The others… who knows?  We did get that one Fairy Egg in early October.  Since then, nothing.

Then, yesterday, we got a Jelly Bean.  In size, anyway.  It’s egg colored, more-or-less, heavy for its size, and so far, we are reluctant to open it.  It doesn’t look like the Fairy Egg did.  The Jelly Bean is much smaller and is not really egg-shaped.  I’ve done about as much research as I can manage and can find only this bit of rather unappetizing information:    the product of a situation where a piece of reproductive tract has been sloughed off and then treated like an egg, thus prompting it to be encased within albumin, membranes, and shell {giving it the exact appearance of an egg, just much smaller and generally without yolk}.

The Fairy Egg, October 2017

That doesn’t quite fit our situation.  Nor do all the reassurances that young hens often lay small eggs – our girls are not young.  Ditto information about old hens slowing down.  Our hens are not old.  In the chicken-world, they are ‘just right’ – two are two-and-a-half and the other two are three-and-a-half.  They should be in their prime.

They look and act healthy.  They eat and drink well.  If the Fairy Egg and Jelly Bean are any indication, they are not on strike, exactly.  At least one of them (maybe two) is trying.  We do not think they are eating their eggs – surely there would be some evidence left?  They have been mostly inside their run – no chance of a hidden nest.

Time for the stew pot, I say.  Farmer Nyel is not disagreeing.  I think it’s only a matter of time…