Eggs - Over Easy Please.

I learn something new every day. Yesterday I bought eggs at the grocery store for the first time in a few years. We have our own hens, three of them, and they happily lay their eggs around the yard, but lately I haven't been able to find them. They move around if I disrupt their nesting spot and the search is on. In this extreme cold the eggs are usually frozen and cracked by the time I find them, but I wasn't even finding the frozen ones? Where could they be now?
I found out yesterday why I wasn't getting any eggs and his name is Jake. I never knew that horses ate eggs. I wondered what the yellow goop was on the hay in their manger? I watched him - he gobbled up hay from the manger that was covered in yolk. He even ate the shell, without lifting his lip like they do when they're eating something new for the first time. The little brat has been eating our eggs - mystery solved!
No, I'm not going to get him a pet pig so he can make his own bacon too.
It's all part of the unfolding mystery: who is this Jake?
With winter boredom setting in lately he's been Jake the egg-eating cow horse. He has been taunting Gypsy, who is already quite sensitive about her winter weight ("It's just fur - I could use a little alfalfa?"). He grins at her with his toothless grin (after he yanking out three front teeth a few weeks ago) and taunts her, ears back: "Gypsy is a Co-ow! Gypsy is a Co-ow! Betcha you can't outrun me, fatso!" Run, stop, spin, repeat. Great fun for Jake, not so much for Gypsy. She's learned to hide behind one of the huge snowbanks in the yard.
Now I have never worked cattle off a horse, unless you count a trip to a dude ranch in Alberta a few years back. Jake's not getting this idea that he wants to be a cowboy from me, nope. Genetics are powerful tools. His daddy, My Painted Black Jack, probably never saw a cow either, but pappy goes back to some powerful race and working lines.
There's the legendary and colourful Adios Amigos, considered a foundation sire of the American Paint Horse breed, bred by the Miller 67 Ranch of Big Piney, Wyoming, for speed and agility. He was bred to be a ranch horse but went on to found a great family of performance Paints instead. Looking at his photo, I see Jake. 
His other great, great grandpa was Flying Fawago, the founder of one of Nebraska's first Paint Horse families and a champion show horse in two countries. At the time, his breeder was initially embarrassed by the loud-coloured overo cropout from two race and ranch-bred QH parents, leaving the colourful Flying Fawago in the back pasture for the first four years of his life. The stallion was discovered in 1967 by Donna (Loomis) Brown, who saw him in the field and bought him immediately. The stallion moved to Nebraska to become an APHA Champion with points in Western Pleasure, Halter, Hunter Under Saddle, Trail and Western Riding, siring champions from 1968 through 1982.
Jake's daddy had kind of the same story as his ancestors, except it was Glenn Miller of Hillsburgh, ON, who saw him as a yearling and knew he had to have him. My Painted Black Jack was transplanted to Ontario but he must have packed his ranch genes in his luggage. His legacy will now include young Jake.
So in some ways Jake is full of surprises, but in other ways, he's just being true to his history.
Be careful what you breed for, is all I can say.