Yesterday and today I have been madly searching for eggs. I hear the young hens announcing eggs every little while. Only a few are using the nesting boxes and I have not been able to find the nests in the barn. The children and I climbed the hay in the barn yesterday and found many "perfect" sites, but no eggs. Other crevices and small caves looked perfect for chickens, but also for spiders or snakes. Since The Pink Panther is still recovering from a spider bite no one wanted to be the one to insert his hand or head. When the day cools a bit (if it does) we will go out to the barn once again armed with flashlights, long sleeves, and a rope and search.
With 30+ hens I should be able to gather more eggs than I can use. I am not.
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3 comments:
Lock the youngsters up in the coop with the nest boxes for a couple of days. Leave an egg (I mark the decoy eggs with a black X) in the nest box. It's easier to train the babies to lay in the boxes than to break them of the habit of laying everywhere later. My old hens lay all over tarnation, but amazingly enough, I've trained my 6 month old hens to lay ONLY in the boxes.
Omigosh, what, pray tell, is the rope for?
Please, Wisteria. Do not hang yourself from the barn rafters. They're just eggs!
What kind of chickens do you have? Our Aurucanas (spelling is probably way off) never laid an egg the rooster didn't eat. They the coyote got them all. It was tragic, but I can't claim I missed that rooster crowing at 4 in the morning!
(PS: I'm back, and looking fwd to catching up on you!)
Thanks Doc! Common sense reigns at your farm. Maybe one day it will here, as well.
Zilla, We've got double or triple stacked big round bales in the barn (our emergency hay that we will have to use this winter since we only baled about 30 bales this year) and they have shifted. In the middle of the hay there are big holes that go all the way to the floor. The rope is to help the person who goes down get back up without damaging the string on the hay. There is nothing worse than backing up to a bale of hay with a tractor, picking up the bale, and having it fall apart all over the place, especially when it is wet and cold and you want to go inside for hot chocolate.
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