I am feeling a little paranoid – well, it may not be paranoia – that one of our Araucanas isn’t all she he it should be. Thing is, I am sure that Nightshade is a lady. She is often seen in the laying box, so unless she is preternaturally devious, we are assuming that she is responsible for the near-daily blue egg which appears in said box. She is also the more accepted of the pair; she will peck about amongst the other hens quite cheerfully, with little trouble, while Cobweb tends to hang back, lone-ranger-style. We have yet to have a day with two blue eggs (which would presumably settle it once and for all; I realise that I have no basis for this assumption, but both Quercus and I are under the impression that hens lay once a day, and once only – do correct me if we are wrong), and I’m starting to wonder about Cobweb… Could he she it be a female impersonator, I ask? As far as I can tell, they look the same, with the only easy difference being that Cobweb has pale yellow legs while Nightshade has darker, almost black legs. They don’t seem to have different combs, though, and there are no obvious spurs going on. Am I paranoid?

Also, I found a rather mangled egg in the henhouse today. It hadn’t had a proper shell, but rather a sort of papery-feeling effort which clearly didn’t protect it during the laying process; there was yolk to indicate it had been an egg, but that was about it. We haven’t been giving the hens much in the way of grit lately, I realise, largely because they are out all day with access to lots of gritty ground, and partly, if I’m honest, because the bag of sodding grit is behind an equally sodding piece of plasterboard. Thing is, though, none of the other eggs have been in any way unusual, and the hens have the same diet. So, does one simply get one-off odd ones from time to time, or is this something we should investigate further?