Eggs again

When I went back out yesterday there were ten eggs under the tree. The Internet told me to put them in water to test them, and since they all sank to the bottom I boiled them and fed them to the kids. Haven't had any complaints, although one soiled diaper today smelled like something that had died. But there was only one egg in the coop instead of two. I thought "Oh no, now another one has found a hiding place."

I went out and looked under the tree just now and there were no eggs. Great, I thought. She's on to me. But then I looked in the coop and there were three eggs, one of them in the first nest box that they stopped using during the broody bantam debacle. Silly chicken.

Success

No sooner had I finished typing that last post, than a huge cackling arose from outside. I never did figure out what they were on about, but I noticed that Helga the Bantam Rooster was accompanied by only one of his three big girls. Since two of them use the same next box in their coop and the third one is all hidey, I deduced that the errant chicken had to be in her secret spot. I had already checked around the fence and other sheltered places, but I went out again anyhow, since a big ol' chicken is a lot easier to find than eggs that are the same color as the local clay. I finally found her under some weeds next to a tree and a stump. Now I'm probably going to have to go out and throw out a bunch of rotten eggs.

To complete today's grossness, I found the body from the crushed egg next to the chicken coop. It was a tiny little black thing, fully formed, but it didn't look old enough to have survived. At least the big girl didn't eat it. It's resting peacefully in a baggie in the freezer, waiting for the kids to come home from school. Blech.

Ewwww ew ew ew

We've been getting a lot of big chicken eggs since the last time I posted. There used to be three a day, but one of the girls has been hiding hers for the last couple of weeks. We have 2 1/2 acres of long grass, so my efforts to find them have been fruitless.

Our shipment from Meyer Hatchery on March 17th brought us eight chicks - 3 Easter eggers for my son, 3 golden buffs for me, a black star for one daughter and a golden-laced wyandotte for another daughter. Unfortunately, two of the easter eggers have started crowing, and we can't get rid of them because they were my son's birthday present. : p They're not really big enough to sire decent meat chickens, either.

My little grey bantam hen went broody a few weeks ago. The big girls were interfering with her nest, so I locked her up in the hutch inside the chain-link kennel where I keep the younger chickens. That did not go over well, and cured of her broodiness. A week or two later the little red hen disappeared, and now, long story short, they're *both* sitting in the cardboard box inside the hutch, on a huge clutch of eggs. It's so cute the way they fan out their little tails and growl when I point my finger at them.

Today I noticed the the grey hen was out of the cage, so I lifted up the angry little red hen to look at the eggs. One was crushed on one side so I took it out. I gently cracked it on a wooden stair until part of the shell fell open, and there was blood. Just then a Plymouth rock came up, took the egg from me, and ran off with it . YUCK! I decided I'd had enough of farm life for today and came back inside.