Eggs for Jan 21 2005

I’ve checked for eggs a few times today, and there are none yet. Yesterday I collected a warm one at 11am. It’s now about 12pm, so maybe I’ll get something very soon. I just changed the Leghorns nest box for a fresh one. [I use water boxes, sturdy thick cardboard, with the perfect lip to hold hay or straw in if one top flap isn’t pulled open when opening the water box … I cut a three sided hole in the top with a steak knife to act as the egg retrieval flap, and connect the box to the SuperYard using bungee cords which hold on through the “side hole handles”. It works beautifully, and only needs replacing if the rains have been often and the box falls apart. Can withstand normal rainy day usually, if next day is dry. If I painted the boxes with outdoor enamel paint, as I’ve wanted to but haven’t yet, I think they’d survive a whole year or so. In any case, I need to replace them on and off, not very often, a few or four a year maybe, unless I start out with an inferior box, which I did last time 🙂 ]

The A-Frame was moved, Frank swung it around to the left. No brown egg there at that point. I’m going to figure out a new nest box for them. We got a light out for them last night. Frank got a hanging lightbulb dealy-do. So I was able to see lovely things in their after dark. The Australorps all huddle together under the loft on the grass in the corner, and the three Wyandotte types stuff themselves together onto the loft.

That explains what I thought was probable but could only sense in the darkness, but not see. So I saw it in full disclosure last night. That explains the lack of hay entirely up there now too. The lip on the edge of the loft isn’t as high as I’d like for hay retention. With three biggish hens sleeping there nightly, well that’s a doer-in of a totally only nest box loft. 🙁

I’m finding myself thinking of putting a loft on the other side too. Door on that side as well. Nest box jutting out behind it as well, a shed roof type that opens on the outside, under the handles that move the A-Frame. ONE of those places should be an egg laying place, I hope. I mean dedicated a bit for sure by the hens themselves, a dedicated nest box. With them thinking the same as me about it. 🙂 One thing I want to do also is make a stairway kind of roosting bar deal. Like a stringer coming out from the board that comes down in the front of the loft … and then sticks going across to go up the stringer giving levels to roost on, and hop to the loft on. They fly up there fine, but figuring if roosts supplied, they might decide to roost on the roosts. Maybe. Maybe not. Worth the effort. This is a proto-type experimental pen. 🙂

Before I published this post I went back out to the Leghorns to check, and yes, there was a nice white egg. Hay made into two circular depressions, which is indicative of two hens in there at once. Which means, another hen is interested in laying, maybe today, maybe not, but at least happy to have a full hay nest box again, for one day at least. I reinstalled the bungee cords to make the box ride high — they had been getting on top of the older one that I just took out this morning, sleeping on top of that, some of them. 🙄

They have a nice roosting rail that they use. It’s just funny that some of them want to cram themselves on top of a box as they did. They have done that in the past too, but not always.