It’s 9 days since the girls began to lay.
There have been 21 eggs so far; I’ve eaten 1, given 6 away and have 10 in the fridge.
There were 4 ‘bummers’. One was laid out in the open and had a small peck hole in it (nobody owned up, but Cheeky was the closest and clucking and looking guilty).
Two had no shell and the remaining one I found early one morning, broken, under the night roost. It must have dropped out of someone’s rear end during the night. I figured whoever it was wouldn’t lay that day, but they all did, so someone actually managed 2 in 24 hours.
The largest was 48 g and the average is around 42 g. I assume their egg production systems are still getting into gear and will eventually settle down.
They’ve refused to go into the nests built into the side of the coop (looks like I wasted my money on a pre-made coop) and seem to like digging a hole in the sand on the floor of the coop and arranging the shredded paper around the hole.
So that I don’t have to scrabble on hands and knees, I bought a dog pooper-scooper with a long handle which makes collecting the eggs easy.
I finally finished the last of the bought eggs, so from now on it’s all my own produce. A really good feeling, to provide yet another food item for myself.
Foodnstuff 
January 1, 2012 at 6:27 am |
If you try putting an egg in the nestbox you want the chooks to use they might just get the idea that you want them to lay there.
Use a real egg if you can spare one or you can buy fake eggs to teach them to lay where you want them to.
Doesn’t always work but it might seeing that they are just starting to lay.
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January 1, 2012 at 7:24 am |
Hi Scarecrow, thanks for the comment.
I already have 2 china eggs in the ‘proper’ nestboxes, but the problem is, the nestboxes are off the ground and level with the night roosting perches. There’s actually a perch that leads right into the nestbox area. There was a ramp but it took up too much room and I removed it and added the extra perch thinking all they had to do was jump up on the perch and walk into the nestbox area. Nope, too easy!
To my knowledge they’ve never checked out this area, in fact before they started to lay the only time they would go into the coop was at night. They won’t even go in there when it’s bucketing down (there’s a tarpaulin over the main run, so they don’t get wet anyway).
At the moment they’re laying under the night roosts, but fortunately just to one side, so there’s no conflict with poop getting in the way.
I’d like them to lay over on the other side, well away from the roosting perches and have put the china eggs there now, but they are single-minded and always choose the same spot.
I can’t see them changing now. They’ll do what they’re happy with and I guess I’m stuck with that.
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