Where's my eggs?

As a first time chicken farmer, there are many things I've learned and many things I'm sure I will continue to learn. When my husband first mentioned that he wanted to get chickens, I immediately had hesitations. I thought of chickens as stinky, dirty birds that would be more trouble than their worth. Well, now we have chickens and my opinion has changed. Chickens don't stink if you clean their areas properly. Chickens are not dirty, though if you let them free range in your yard, be prepared to occasionally step in their droppings. On the same note, be prepared for them to scratch and dig for juicy bugs even if that happens to be in your garden or flower beds. Our chickens have personality which kind of surprised me.
After a little reading, we found that hens start laying at about 18 weeks. So for the first 17 or so weeks, you get to do everything for them but without the profit of eggs. We started off with 4 Black Star hens which had just started to lay. They laid very well even through the cold winter months. We lost one to a fox, one to a dog we were babysitting and one to an infection. We had one left. We had picked up 3 hens that were supposed to be Speckled Sussex. Once they matured, we realized they were not Speckled Sussex. They look and act like Game hens. They lay smaller light colored eggs, but are not as good as the Black Stars for production.
This past summer, we ordered hatching eggs. We successfully hatched out Barred Rock and Welsummer chicks. We couldn't wait until they turned 18 weeks and starting producing eggs. We plan to sell hatching eggs as well as chicks. We waited, and waited and waited. 18, 19 then 20 weeks passed and not a single egg. Finally, at 29 weeks of age we got our first 2 eggs from the Barred Rock hens we paired with our Rhode Island Red rooster. These will be Black Star chicks. At 30 weeks of age, the Barred Rock hens we paired with Barred Rock roosters started laying. At 31 weeks of age, we finally got our first Welsummer egg. What happened to the 18 weeks? I happily placed 8 Black Star eggs and 2 Barred Rock eggs in the incubator. 2 more eggs are either Black Star or Barred Rock, but I forgot to note which one so I won't know until they hatch.
We had one small green egg that came from one of our Game hen chicks who we hatched out with the Barred Rocks and Welsummers. This hen which looks really close to the Welsummer hens, but is a little thinner and has the game hen tail, is the product of a mating between one of our game hens and Able. Able was supposed to be a Rhode Island Red, but after comparing him to other Rhode Island Reds, we decided he must not be one. He looked very similar to our Welsummer Roosters, but he had a rose comb. So this hen mated with our Welsummer rooster and at 30 weeks of age, started to produce green eggs. I added the first green egg to the incubator because I'm really curious to see what comes out. Sometime around February 1 or 2, our eggs should hatch. I'm excited.

Chicken Eggs for Hatching

We ordered some fertilized eggs off Ebay. We have 7 Welsummer and 7 Barred Rock. We hope to have mostly (all would be great) hens. We picked up 2 barred rocks a week ago. They are supposed to be 12-14 week old Barred Rock (BR) hens. One may be a rooster (lighter and larger than the other). Hens are supposed to be darker. The darker one seems to be smaller than I'd imagined. I hope it's not a bantam barred rock. They won't begin to lay until about 18 weeks of age. Our hope is for them to breed with Able, our Rhode Island Red rooster that we picked up a week ago. If successful, we will have Barred Rock roosters (male chicks) and Black Stars (female chicks). They call them sex-links because you can determine their sex by their color. We hope to incubate the eggs today once the temperature gets about 95 degrees in the incubator. Two of the eggs (one of each) we will let Pearl (Sussex hen) incubate. She is very broody. I placed one BR egg under her a little while ago and it seems she does not mind that it's not her egg. In a little while, I will add a Welsummer egg to Pearl's nest. We hope she'll hatch the eggs and raise the chicks as hers. If so, we may keep her as our brood hen. I'd love to have a couple of Buff Orpingtons for that job. We should expect to have chicks in 21 days. That would be June 9th. We'll let you know how it goes