On the first day you think nothing of it. They’re just having an off-day and let’s face it, there have been lots of good times of late. The next day, it’s not you who goes out and when DM comes in he’s got nothing but you just think it’s because he forgot to look rather than there were none. By the next day, you’ve got loads on your mind and the fact that there have been none for days now has fallen off your radar.

None is no blue eggs. Brown eggs and white eggs, no problem, but no blue eggs.

Yesterday, I opened up the chooks and Tina, one of our two cream legbars, hurtled out past me as though her arse was on fire. She galloped along the pink path and out of sight around the corner. I didn’t think much of it really, just that she’d got a bee in her bonnet about something. Still no blue eggs though.

This morning, the same thing happened. I stayed by the door of the coop and watched from afar as she hurtled into the secret garden, hopped around a couple of obstacles (bird bath, shrub) and disappeared into the bamboo, from where a muted, contented clucking could be heard.

I did nothing. I played it really cool. I went about my business as normal until late this afternoon. Then I ambled back around the corner into the secret garden, poked about a bit and found the above. Eight beautiful blue eggs, nestled into a little nest in the edge of the bamboo.

Did I get away with it? Did I ‘ekkers like! (As my Lancashire Dad would say.) I had a little audience of disapproving clucking chooks watching my every move and as I walked back towards the house with my plastic ice-cream tub of eggs, a deputation followed me protesting loudly. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the condemnation of a chicken until it happens to you. They may only be considered food to many but they are, as I have said many times before, clever little buggers considering the minute size of their brain.

The eggs were in the nest ergo they were nest eggs. Now they are food (the eggs that is, not the chooks)!