Silly Hens
My hens are very silly!! I build them some beautiful laying boxes which are easy for me to reach from the outside of the coop. there are three of them. A ladder is leading up to the boxes so it is easy to get there.
They are clean with some nice all-purpose chips creating a great environment for laying eggs. A faked egg in each box is suggesting to them where to lay.
BUT!!!!! What do they do?
They lay their eggs in the roosting area!! Crazy chickens!!
The good thing is that I am using the deep mulch method and use lots of pine straw which makes for a smell free coop.
The bad thing is that if I don't remove the eggs frequently, one might go up on the roost and let go of a load. That, we don't like!!
The black and white hen was waiting in line for brownie to get done. But when she saw the camera, once again, all I got is the back side of a chicken.
Steepshot |
Lol. We have a handful of mystery mixes we hatched out under a Spitzhauben hen that went broody in the beginning of this winter after apparently hoarding eveyone's eggs in the whole pen for a few days without us realizing it! Some of them are pretty neat looking! Your lady here is pretty whatever her parentage! I had said, "Nope! Absolutely not, we're not getting chickens!" ... That was about a year and a half ago... We now have almost 70. Not a typo. Lol. SMH When I finally caved and said "O.K maybe just a few... " I started to research, and found a whole new world I had never known existed! (I had always thought chickens were fine, but kinda boring and I didn't think much about them. They just didn't interest me much. Then ...I found out there were Rock Star chickens!!! :O LOL! Chickens with Mowhawks and all black ones and Oh my GOSH The Cream Legbars!!! Yep, I have a lot of different pure bred chickens, also we have a lot from TSC ,and they all eat better than I do sometimes, but I love our mixed ones just as much! I'd be so sad without my chickens! Lol We also have a bachelor flock kind of experiment going on at the moment... we'll see how that works out... Haha! I look forward to seeing more of your cuties! :D
Oh, you have the bug!! there are so many varieties out there.....
And some are sooooo good looking :)
One of the coolest looking chicks we hatched out is from my two most favorite looking breeds when it comes to roosters... (sigh, It won't be laying any eggs) it's a Cream Legbar x Svart cockerel. He's really neat looking. All black with a white pattern around his neck, and a crest! I'm cringing at the thought of TSC this week as I believe they get chicks in and day now. I'm not buying any more but it's going to be hard... ROFL!
Wishing you the strength to say NO! It will be hard! :)
You really cant beat freshly laid organic eggs... It's really cool that you keep chickens.. You're full of surprises :)
For sure!! I can't eat eggs unless I know how the chickens are living :)
Yep. Hens will be hens. I hesitate to use the phrase 'bird brain' :)
They definitely have a mind of their own. And some are smarter than others... 😉
I'm thinking : Egg-Pampers for chickens, has anyone invented them yet?
Don't know about the egg pamper part. But there are people who take chickens to old folks homes and convalescent homes - therapy chickens, and some use diapers for them...
The chickens are so cute. Sorry, your idea for getting the eggs didn't work. It made me a laugh a little. :)
Well, I still get the eggs. Just have to either open a big door on the roost or reach around a corner to get them. Exercise is good, right? LOL
Exercise is great, haha. :D
Those little chicks are quite quick. Maybe if you tip them they'll smile at your camera, hehe.
I tip them with yummy bugs and greens and all kinds of goodies all the time. Then they still show me their butt because they are so busy pecking at everything... 😂
Tipping them with bugs reminds me of when I was tending a garden and raising chickens. We got grub worms as big as your thumb out of our compost pit, so I always took a jar with me to the garden. When I went back inside, I would drop by the chicken pen and treat the girls.
I joked that each grub was a "ticket to the show" and my girls never failed to give me a good show as they fought over those grubs. lol
Oh yes!! They love those grubs!! I am building them compost piles in the chicken area so they can get their own snacks :)
Lol, ungrateful moochers.
Beautiful chickens! What breed are they?
the very highly priced backyard mutt breed!!
🤣
can't believe that it is almost 4. Just made it 10 minutes before the Azure cut off! Now, off to fee those crazy chicks...
Lol, I LOVE my chickens! I would have never thought I would get chickens, but I have a lot now! What kind is that gold and black colored hen? She's pretty :)
I truly have no idea. When I started out, I bought maybe 10 chickens from a lady who is into heritage chickens. Then, I took a few chicken classes and one was brooding. so, I got 40 eggs from her and picked barnyard. basically, if she had a hen she hadn't sold by the time the went through their first molt, she put all the different kinds together into a big yard and sold the eggs for eating or for people like me who didn't want to pay $ 5+ per egg for a pure breed.
The brown one is from one of the variety pack getting broody and there were several roosters - so no idea who the father is. And none of the possible mothers and fathers were brown at all. Now, I have 2 girls like that.
By the way, both of them were still sitting on the nest when I went back 4 hours later. They might be broody and decided to sit together...
If they are still on it tomorrow, I will have to build a Nursery for them to keep others to lay more eggs in the clutch....
they had left the nest the next morning.... And I have so many girls right now and so much going on....
Chicken "logic" is always a mystery to the keeper of hens!
So True!!