Egg production hasn't been what we expected but we've chalked that up to a lot of different factors. Over the summer two of the girls went broody - which is cute for a day or two until they stop laying and don't leave the next box and insist on laying on everyone else's eggs. Luckily neither one was aggressive - I've read that some chickens will peck or attack anyone trying to make them leave the next. My girls would complain and head back to the hen house as soon as they could, but no biting.
After they stopped being broody, egg production picked up a little bit until molting time. The number of feathers floating around the backyard would briefly give me pause everyday until three live chickens came racing around the corner of the deck to see if I had brought any snacks home with me. All three molted at different times but we stopped getting as many eggs each day and then the days got shorter as winter set in. We don't have any artificial light for the chickens so egg production naturally drops off as winter sets in.
The last few months, as the days have been longer and the chicken girls are all healthy, we've gone weeks before we'll find a few eggs in the coop. We blamed the cold, we gave the chickens pep talks, sometimes I resorted to strongly worded lectures (listen you slacker chicken girls!) and egg production has slightly increased over the last few weeks. But we definitely haven't been getting eggs every day. Sometimes there will be three eggs in there and then we'll go a few days with nothing.
Which brings us to today. Glenn called me as on my way home and said something like "I might have figured out what's happening with the eggs but don't jump to any conclusions." Today was cold and snowy but the snow wasn't sticking and the yard was a big muddy mess. The chickens don't mind but we kept the dogs inside to cut down on the mess. When Glenn got home, he let the dogs out, went to check for eggs and as he opened up the back of the coop, he was greeted by Trigger standing inside the hen house.
Huh.
"Don't jump to any conclusions?" Yes, we should probably conclude that Trigger has been eating the eggs.
Mystery solved? Probably. We tested it when I got home and with hardly any encouragement, Trigger can squeeze himself through the chicken sized door into the hen house. Tootsie took a lot more convincing so I think she's off the hook. Unless she's smart enough to not incriminate herself. Looking back, every once in a while, I'd find a few tiny bits of egg shell in the nesting boxes and I'd worry that maybe the chickens were eating their own eggs (eww) but the few times that had happened before, it was a bigger mess and they wouldn't eat the whole thing. I wondered if something small was getting into the hen house and stealing eggs but there aren't many animals out here that wouldn't just try to get the chickens.
Furthermore, Trigger will eat just about anything. In the past, we've caught him snacking on raw potatoes, onions and a banana that he pulled off the counter. He can hear the sound of a chip dropping on to the kitchen floor from rooms away and he also tries to steal the scraps I bring out for the chickens. Once he gorged on the cat food bag that he found in the garage and then barfed it up all over our bed. That was a fun day. AND, his coat has never looked more luxurious. Or maybe that's only if he's been bathing in eggs, I don't know.
AND we keep finding little bits of wood shavings from the coop inside the house. This has been happening for a while. We'd just say man that stuff gets everywhere ha ha ha and never wonder why are the wood shavings from inside the coop INSIDE THE HOUSE and stuck in Trigger's coat? Huh.
Bottom line, it's a good thing that Glenn and I don't run a detective shop. We can solve mysteries but it takes a while and it's helpful if the evidence just sort of presents itself, by standing in the hen house waiting for you to feed it an egg. To borrow a line from one of my favorite episodes of Law & Order (where clearly I learned NOTHING about detecting, evidence, putting two and two together, etc.) "Girl you are as dumb as a sack of hair."
Kids, if you are reading this, Dad and I are going to brush up on our detective skills by the time you are teenagers. We'd better get cracking.
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| Who me? It's not dog shaming if said dog as no conscience. |
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