Emboldened with advice from the Backyard Chickens Forum, I went out to turn the chicks loose, only to find that one of the Reds had laid an egg. Not in any of the nest boxes, of course (why on earth would they do that?).

I still went ahead and let the chicks out and put away the chick gate for the time being. It went much better than I had expected. The Reds did a little bit of pecking to assert their dominance over them (read: we get to peck at the feeder first), but they otherwise ignored the chicks and went out to do their usual regimen of sunning and scratching for food.

Sunday morning when I went out to feed them before church, one of the Reds had sequestered herself in a small recess in the wall and was covering herself with straw, while the other three stood guard. The three vacated as soon as the door was open, but the nesting hen remained behind. So at the risk of disrupting her laying, I banded her leg and let her go. She pecked a little and eventually ended up back in the recess (and an egg was waiting when I got back from church).

I also banded the Silver Wyandotte that my daughter dubbed Jean-Bob, just so we could tell her apart from the others. You have to maintain a certain sense of whimsy when doing this, and with chickens it's not hard.

I've also delayed deciding whether to get some Barred Rocks. The ones they had remaining before Easter at Tractor Supply didn't look quite right to me, and an acquaintance who works there told me that they're expecting 500 more chicks in soon. So I think I'll wait and see what happens. I think I'd be pushing my luck to see if any Easter Eggers are in this next batch, but they may have some Barred Rocks with brighter eyes and bushier tails than those I saw last week.

By the way, my son was home from college this weekend, so he got the first egg and ate it in an A/B comparison with one that was store-bought. He much preferred the fresh free-range egg. So now maybe he doesn't think his old man is quite as nuts as when this whole chicken enterprise started.

(My mom got the second egg).