Landlady’s Brahmas are starting to lay eggs. By the standards of a guy with three hens, they’re starting to lay quite a few eggs. But they don’t all have the idea just yet, and I’m in there quite a lot lately making changes.
Somebody, for example, either hasn’t figured out that the nesting boxes are for when you feel that special urge or has gone straight to ‘hide my eggs from the mean guy who keeps stealing them.’ Yesterday I brought home some hardware so I could hang the watering bucket from cords rather than stand it on blocks, thus being able to put more nipples on the bottom. And this morning when I moved the blocks I found two miraculously-unbroken eggs on the ground on the far side.
A few days ago I brought a piece of old plywood in to put on top of the shelf rack that holds the nesting boxes. A bunch of chickens had taken to sleeping on the top shelf and raining down copious shit onto/into the boxes and fouling the straw. The plywood overhung the shelf a little bit on the side, but I didn’t think it would do any harm. Chickens don’t weigh all that much, they’d have to all get up there and use it as a diving board simultaneously to knock it down.
Apparently that’s exactly what they all did, because the next morning I found the plywood lying on the ground next to the shelf. And it seems to have made an impression. Judging from subsequent chickenshit deposits, not one hen has gone up there since.
Be all that as it may, and notwithstanding the fact that the amount of feed 14 chickens can consume would buy a lot of eggs, they are at least starting to lay eggs. I got seven total out of them yesterday, and four so far today (counting the hidden ones, which probably count for an earlier day.) So there should be a little something in Landlady’s fridge next time she comes up for all her trouble.
