That's 36 eggs for the last (incomplete) week of September; a record 229 eggs harvested during that month; and 10 eggs collected in the first two days of October. I suppose all this time I should have been counting the weeks as complete and track eggs by 52 weeks instead of 12 months. But then I would have needed something like the standard broadcast calendar, which is used by the industry I work in (advertising). These calendars break months up into units of either four or five weeks, each with seven full days, which run from Monday to Sunday. So, for example, the broadcast month of October 2004 actually started on Monday, September 27th, with the first week ending on Sunday, 10/3. That way media billing is more uniform, as opposed to breaking up a flight of spots and billing half in one month, and half in another. Or something like that.

But I digress.

A week from Friday the Rosses are supposed to go to be processed - but I don't think they're going to be ready. The power is still not on to the barn, and I think the lack of a heat lamp for the last 19 days, with fall beginning, has slowed their growth. Basically, without optimum temperature, or at least elevated temperature, they're using more food energy to stay warm as opposed to grow. They'll get to maturity, no doubt about that, it just won't happen in 42 days. Right now they're still peeping and aren't showing any physical sex characteristics. This time last year I knew I had one roo and one pullet. Right now I still don't know.

Unless they do some incredible growing in the next 9 days or so, I'm going to have to give them another couple of weeks to flesh out, so to speak.

Meantime, things are pretty stable in the farmyard. Rocky's crowing is still pathetic and sounds like a New Year's Party Horn. Roger is still boss roo, but he still gets pushed around by the surviving Reds. My daughter is trying to track when her doe goat comes into heat so we can have her bred next month for a spring kid... and there's another part of the barn that we have to prepare as her new home.

Also, on November 7th is a "Chickenstock" up near Medina, where area members of the Backyard Chickens Forum gather to exchange food, chicken lore, chicken advice, and chickens. I'm hoping that someone has two or three Ameraucana pullets so I can add a little color variety to my eggs (I'm currently getting dark brown, light brown, and an in-between brown the color of a chocolate Necco wafer). It's called putting a little fun into the process.