Miss Bridgette's First Week on the Pre-Farm

Pre-Farm:  My new word for what our city home is becoming.  As spring has begun to ever...so..slowly...creep into our part of the world, our small window of opportunity to list our city home has come and gone.  With over 5 feet of snow left in areas of our yard, it now starting to melt, our yard has become a muddy lake.  Everyone wants a house on a secluded island, but not when the island is house surrounded by a muddy city lawn lake.  The plan now is to work steadily on getting the inside of the house ready so that as soon as the yard has dried, we can mulch the front garden beds and get the yard looking beautiful again and then list.  With the current schedule Mother Nature is keeping, I'm predicting a listing date of about early to mid June *sigh*.  Everything happens for a reason, right?

With the new timeline, at least my garden questions are answered for the year.  I purchased seeds to suit the city garden, I'll plant it and we will enjoy it either until it sells or the end of the reason, whichever comes first.  I keep telling myself that it might be a selling feature.  I know I would have loved to buy a house with raised vegetable gardens, a kitchen herb garden and random edible plants growing around.  Add on top of it all that there is will be an optional chicken coop... whats not to love?

This brings me to the title of today's post: Bridgette's First Week.  Let me tell you, she's a pretty cool bird.  After being left to fend for herself in an inner city neighbourhood and starving and freezing in a spring snow and rain storm, one would think that she probably wouldn't be in the mood for laying anytime soon.  Heck, some birds quit laying for weeks or months just because they went from one cozy farm to the next.  Well, Miss Bridgette is a resilient girl.  As of today, day 7 of the pre-farm, Bridgette has laid 3 eggs.  One per day since she started.
Now the first one was pretty speckled (bottom egg in picture), and not knowing her history I decided that we should wait for at least a week or two to see how their quality progressed.  Sometimes speckled eggs can be caused by nutritional deficiency. Not that I think there is anything 'bad' about them, but since is takes about 25 days for an egg to be laid (from the time is begins its journey inside the chicken), these eggs are a product of her past life.  We aren't sure where that was, or what she ate, so we're going to give her a few days to get that old life out of her system.  Since she has been with us she has been eating great, so she will be ready to go soon and I think the increasing quality shows that her new diet is working for her. The middle egg in the picture is from yesterday and the top egg is from today.  Today's egg is actually speckled in lavender spots.... kind of pretty!  I've read that some 'special' birds lay like this all the time.  We shall see.

Another interesting this about Bridgette's eggs is that they are brown!!  Now, brown eggs are totally normal, which I'm sure you all know.  The interesting this is that we were sure that B was a leghorn chicken... which lay extra large WHITE eggs.  Since she looks like a leghorn (right down to her white ears) I'm guessing that maybe she is a mixed breed.  Not sure.  She's cool and we like her just the way she is.  I am working on finding her a few friends, however, so she isn't lonely.  I have a few leads... let's hope one works out.... Let the pre-farm animal count increase! haha!

Coop construction has started.  My husband has really come through for me on this one and it is looking GREAT,  I'm going to do a separate post on it once its ready for the world to see.  B and her future coop friends will love it I'm sure.  I love how hubby is really embracing the pre-farm.  I'm sure he wouldn't be thrilled if he came home to a few goats, but he seems to like Bridgette and her future egg laying is going to make them buddies for sure :)