Chickens Update

I’m going to post twice today because I have some cooking to share for those with a few final ripe tomatoes, but I know you’re eager for a chicken update!

A week ago, after a trip to Chicago, I came home to find the chickens happily going about their business in the pen. Their caregiver while I was gone was a busy landscaper, so they’d spent a lot of time in the pen. Several days they had laid five eggs in the catbox/brooder box, but sometimes they had also only laid three, as had been my experience.

Well, when I went in, there were only four chickens. No one in the brooder box or the coop. I feared the worst, but as I let them out into the yard, one more popped up– from beneath the coop. I had checked for a nest there before, but it had been a couple of weeks. And guess what I found when I knelt down and looked more carefully? NINE eggs! I brought them in and did the freshness test (they all sank in a bowl of water, no floaters).

Since I’ve been back, they actually seem to have gotten with the program. I let them out about noon when I’m home (if I’m working, it can be 4:30 p.m. when they get out in the yard). There are usually three eggs laid by then. But sure enough, the other two have been mostly coming back to the pen when they’re ready and laying their eggs in the brooder box.

I used the extra eggs with a round of baking, and now we’re in great shape. I’ve had some great fall days with these girls. They joined me for much of the bed clearing, and they let me know when I cleaned the carrots that the greens belonged to them, reaching in and pecking at them. We also say prayers together in the morning– they seem to be Muslim, with their soft cooing and clucking of “allah, akhbar.”