The Thing(s) about Eggs

So, I’ve learned a few things about chickens & eggs this week (but no, I still don’t know which came first).

First, I learned that while laying boxes are easy to build convincing chickens that run around the yard and woods several hours a day to use them consistently is a bit more difficult. Of the four eggs we found today only one was in a box…one was on the ground in front of the boxes and two were under a rainwater tank by the house. I also suspect one of the Wyandottes laid an egg on the hill behind their coop but couldn’t find it.Can we train the chickens to lay their eggs so we don’t have to hunt for them? Is there a “chicken whisperer” we can call to coach us on this? Aargh.  Before the pullets started laying I put a wooden egg and an egg shaped rock in two of the boxes to give the girls an idea of what these boxes are for…although we have found up to four eggs in the boxes in one day they seemed to have missed the significance.

Anyway, you can build a coop (much less the boxes for laying) out of almost anything. We needed a shed for garden tools so decided to get one (see Barn Razing) last February and convert a third of it into sleeping/laying quarters for the chickens. Josh put the laying boxes in last, using old boxes from a coop that must have been on our property years ago but people make cheap laying boxes out of different materials…plastic buckets, plywood, or scrap lumber. The most important things (as I have learned, anyway) is that the boxes should be at least 1′x1′x1′ and about 12 inches or so high. Also, slope the roof so chickens won’t roost on them, making a mess and possibly disturbing any hens that want to cozy in and lay eggs.

Josh put a plywood door on the back of the boxes so that they open into the shed which makes it easy to get eggs out and, like the rest of the coop, lined the opening with metal fencing to deter hungry predators. On the inside the chickens have a platform to jump up on so that they can step easily into the boxes; the way he put this on it drops down so that it is easy to clean the floor of the coop but that isn’t necessarily something you need to do…for us it helps because the coop is so narrow (only 3 feet wide) that it would be hard to walk all the way to the back otherwise.

I also learned that chickens love tortilla chips. The salt is probably not so good for them so I only gave them a couple but wow, these girls would love eating at a Mexican restaurant…bring on the chips, hold the salsa!

Finally, I learned that chickens & their eggs are sometimes repulsive.