September 17, 2010
Well, I didn’t wake up to the sound of the other chickens attacking Goldie Locks this morning at least. She did sleep in the nest again overnight even though I had rearranged all the boxes to make them look like a high rise apartment complex. The new setup sufficiently confused the girls long enough that they stopped picking on Goldie locks and were more interested in checking out the new digs. However, I had an uneasy feeling about the new set up myself; it looked, well, too exposed. If I were a chicken, I’d want a little more privacy to hide my eggs, with all the nest boxes on top of each other and facing outward, well it was open and the standard hens were picking at the shavings and nosing their way into everything. I was afraid they would have too easy access to an egg if one was laid and afraid they might peck it.
Eventually Goldie went back to brooding in the same box and all of the standards were up there in her face. Bob had told me that a hen goes into a kind of a trance when broody and sitting on the nest and she is at her most vulnerable. I had seen the trance. The others seemed to take it as a sign they could mess with or peck at her and unlike her usual feisty self; she didn’t do much about it. Therefore this morning when I went out, I thought I should make some changes. The birds were all gathered around Goldie again and Raven seemed to want to lay an egg because she was going in and out of the boxes and making a big ruckus when the other hens would get near the box as if she was claiming it as her own. They pretty much ignored her, as did Goldie. I then decided on a new tactic, went in and got the fifth large box that was in the garage and filled it with wood shavings. I set the boxes up in a series of angles and stacks so that two large boxes and one small box were on the bottom. The entrance to the small box was made narrow so only the small hens could get into it and it once again provided privacy. I stacked a small nest box on top of it and a large one next to it, both turned inward facing each other and not outward, so more privacy. In addition, the fifth box now acted as a sort of platform for the birds to jump on to in order to access the upper boxes. Before, with the boxes all facing outward stacked on top of one another, the birds were not inclined to fly up into them because they really didn’t have much of a perch outside of them. This seemed like a neat, new set up and reminded me of the new “fancy” apartment buildings that yuppies like to occupy. :-) Myself included...
By that time, it was getting too hot and too muggy and Brian’s Dad had come over for lunch, so I came back inside. Afterward, had to run several errands and didn’t get back home until about 4pm. I went out to check on things and amazingly, Raven had not chosen the old box that she and Goldie had been fighting over and that she had laid her first two eggs in, she had chosen the new higher box that lay on top of Goldie’s box and in it lay her third, perfectly formed white egg, unmolested by any of the others. It still amazes me that such a small bird can lay such a large egg each time I see a new one.
In addition, I noticed that all the boxes had little nesting circles carved out in the shavings so someone had been in all of them trying them out. Not sure who though. Brian’s Dad brought over an empty egg carton as well, having gone through the last eggs we gave him, so as soon as things pick up, we’ll supply him with some more.
I went out and brought the chickens some leftovers from the fridge and a huge handful of weeds from the garden and they all seemed perfectly content. Such is the wonderful cycle of nature that we now have built in composters, they compost our leftovers and nature’s leftovers and turn them into food for us and output even more compost for the garden which will in turn thank them by providing more food for them. It’s a beautiful thing.
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