05 April, 2009

Those darn chickens

I cannot work out where they are laying their eggs. And now it's more than just one Maran. Egg collection rates are down and I just know that there is a cache somewhere but I have hunted and hunted and so far no joy. So tomorrow I am not going to let them out of the run until after 1 pm. This will probably cause much discord in chicken household but that's their own stupid fault. I can't be expected to stand in a field observing chickens all day. And I can't afford GPS tags for each chicken no matter how amusing Tom might find this idea. He also suggested a web cam - which I suppose would be harnessing the power of the web and all you lot out there to watch the damn birds for me. Another amusing but clearly unworkable idea. I don't think he's taking this problem seriously somehow...

4 comments:

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

Yes, my chickens do this one on me too. At the moment I am keeping them in during the morning and getting most of the eggs that way. I did find seven eggs in the logstore the other day. The perils of free range.

Suzanne@ Panteg Alpacas said...

It seems to be that tim eof year - despite having 2 perfectly good houses with 8 boxes between them , my hens have been laying in the horse box - which has been fin e, but they are obviously bored of this and I know that they are movin gon , so back to barracks for a short while - to coincide with the fields being sown I think !

Eliane said...

I confined them to the run until 1pm today and the result was 6 eggs in the hen house (if not all actually in the nesting box) including one from the Maran who started it all - I can tell because she lays these fabulous shiny eggs. So that worked. I'm going to do the same thing for the week and see what how it goes.

Garden Girl said...

Is this like sleep training children? Tough love to break a bad habit? Sometimes I am glad I only have children and no non-human livestock to look after! Good luck with this. The egg graph needs some serious help!