{"id":28060,"date":"2019-03-08T14:25:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T14:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=28060"},"modified":"2019-03-08T14:25:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T14:25:42","slug":"speckles-first-egg-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=28060","title":{"rendered":"Speckles first egg of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning Speckles was back in the nest box again. She had piled a little heap of pine shavings on her back.<\/p>\n

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Speckles with a pile of shavings on her back<\/p><\/div>\n

I was sure she was going to get her egg laid this time.<\/p>\n

I checked back a little later and she was back out in the run. Her egg was in the nest box but I was a bit worried to see quite a streak of blood on it.<\/p>\n

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Speckles bloodied egg<\/p><\/div>\n

Ebony’s egg is on the left, Flame’s egg is in the middle and Speckles egg is on the right.<\/p>\n

I googled blood on an older hen’s egg. What would we do without google! I know that a chicken’s first egg often has a streak of blood on it but Speckles is an older hen, possibly about six years old.<\/p>\n

It said that an older hen sometimes has blood on the first egg of the year because a little blood vessel in her vent may rupture when laying the egg especially if she has a bit of a struggle to lay it or if it is a large egg. Speckles has been trying to lay her egg for three days now so this would make sense. It is also a large egg but Speckles has always laid large eggs and it’s not as large as some she has laid.<\/p>\n

It said that as long as it’s not ongoing then it’s nothing to worry about. I am hopeful that it’s just a glitch and her next egg will be blood free. As Speckles lays an average of three eggs a month it may be a bit of a wait for her next egg. At least the fact that she doesn’t lay often should make the process easier for her.<\/p>\n

Having said that she did lay her first two eggs a few days apart last year and then a long gap between all the eggs after that so we will have to wait and see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning Speckles was back in the nest box again. She had piled a little heap of pine shavings on her back. I was sure she was going to get her egg laid this time. I checked back a little … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28060"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28072,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28060\/revisions\/28072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}