I am so excited. In this battle of wills of me versus the chickens, I appear to be winning. I’ll leave them on lock down for a little bit longer just so they know who is boss!
Thanks to everyone who suggested I prune my lavender, I shall add them to the list of plants that need pruning and then get onto it sooner rather than later.
Come again soon – for a much longer post.
Sarah the Gardener : o )
“There’s an egg in my bucket dear Liza dear Liza?”
Congratulations.
Hi Jean. That is the tune in my head when I found that first egg!
Cheers Sarah : o )
We are getting heaps of eggs but that is only because we finally gave in, let them all out to do whatever the heck they liked and they are nesting in blackberries, on the roof (well…not quite but you get the picture 😉 ) and anywhere that I can’t personally get. I am training Bezial to be an egg hunting dog…he is doing a good job he loves eggs 😉
Hi Fran. It is actually a quite lovely – a kind of romantic rural idle to have chickens pecking and wandering about the place. The reality is they rip up my garden and poop on the deck. They need to lay eggs where I want them too or … well there is no ‘or’ as I don’t want them wandering about willy nilly. Although their coup does have a large outside area so they do get out a bit.
Cheers sarah : o )
I locked mine up in their coop with a large outside area just before summer. I was tired of them hiding their eggs, going clucky and ending up with babies everywhere that were walking straight into the mouths of feral cats because the mothers are next to useless. Over the 4 1/2 months that we kept them in the enclosure we got a grand total of 3 dozen eggs courtesy of a single hen who kept laying (cheers Bob!). The week after we let them back out in defeat (hoping that the quolls would cull at least half of them) we started getting eggs again. Now, in the middle of winter, they are laying well every day although we have to be incredibly savvy to find where the crafty things have laid them. Odds on their nests are in the middle of blackberry thickets and our rooster is amazingly good at picking inaccessible places for them to lay. Chooks might be everyone’s idea of a romantic inclusion on a property but the reality is that they are single minded about repopulating the earth after first digging it up! We know the truth but I doubt many people will believe us…that’s how our chicken overlords keep us doing their bidding! 😉
We also have Wyandottes that lay all the way through winter so that helps 😉
Hi Fran. Our chickens are a motley bunch of in bred mongrels of unknown descent. They are rather lovely though and are beginning to learn where to put their eggs. I still haven’t let them out yet, but they seem happy enough on the inside.
Cheers Sarah : o )