A recent text message I received from my dear husband starts this tale:

Ben: Aprons arrived. So did a super small egg. You won’t believe it.

First, about the aprons – These are not the kitchen variety, but rather the chicken variety. Since I’ve become a hobby chicken farmer, I have learned so many things about chickens that I never before considered. For example, the havoc rowdy roosters can wreak on the hens as they turn the corner from winter into spring and the roosters’ desires to be, well, roosters becomes ever stronger. Let’s just say the boys aren’t very sauve. In fact, they can be downright rough with the ladies. Dozens of times throughout the day. Recently, the hens began to resemble tattered and torn Eliza Doolittles, rather than the Fair Ladies they once were. Bald patches emerged on some of the hens. This led other hens to further feather pick, increasing the size of the patches. Initially I was quite beside myself, worried some unknown plague was hitting Chicken Universe. But a comforting phone call to Ben (who was away on business), a glass of wine and some online research later, and I began to feel a little better about how to address the situation. Once we ruled out any pestilent cause, we tried some natural remedies to deter further feather picking, and we adjusted their food rations to increase the protein level, since winter protein deficiency can be a factor in feather picking. But, ultimately to help the ladies restore their plumage, we resorted to hen aprons. We chose the Hen Saver sold by Crazy K Farm, and are very happy we did so. We’d like to think the ladies are, too. Although they weren’t trilled with us putting these strange capes on them, once the aprons were in place, the hens didn’t even seem to notice. We’re happy to report that new feather growth is starting to come in.

Here is the Buff Orpington Ben now affectionately calls Little Blue Apron, sporting her new duds.


Now about that small egg. While our ladies never went into a full molt in the winter, we have noticed that they are going through a system reboot of sorts as they come out of the cold, low-light season. Some of their eggs have become smaller again, as they were in the first few months when they started laying. While we’ve certainly experienced our share of dainty pullet eggs, the egg Ben reported on has to be the smallest chicken egg we’ve ever seen. It was only slightly larger than a robin egg. What’s more, within two days one of the other ladies delivered for us what has to be one of the largest chicken eggs we’ve ever encountered.

Here these remarkable eggs are pictured with what would be classified as a standard large egg.


P.S. in case you are wondering, the tiniest of eggs contained only the egg white, no yolk. And that largest of eggs was not a double-yolker as we quite expected; however it did contain double the typical ratio of egg white.