Babies Having Babies

Can a girl have some privacy, please?

I was able to confirm that gray naked neck was indeed laying eggs.  I caught her in the nesting boxes over the weekend on both Saturday and Sunday.  To date, I think she's laid every day since last Sunday.  But I could be wrong.

Why could I be wrong?  Well, today when I got home from work, I found two eggs in the nesting box.  So another chicken is also laying.  My guess is it is the other naked neck.  But I'm not sure - just a guess.  Educated guess, though, since they are both two weeks older than the other girls. 

I do need to figure out the nesting box situation, though.  So far, they only seem to like having the pine shavings in the box.  I tried straw and hay, and both were no-go's.  They just kicked the stuff out - and with the hay, they ate it all (i'm guessing they had help from the rest.)

The reason I have to figure it out is one of the eggs was cracked again.  I'm guessing that the second chicken to lay today dropped the egg onto the wood floor of the next box.  Again, just a specualtion, but it was cracked on the narrow end.  I'm guessing that the narrow end comes out first when the chicken pushes it out the vent. 

I don't think I'll be able to confirm this until I get the remote camera installed to watch them during the day.  Yes...I do plan on doing that sometime soon.

I'm a Real Farmer Now

I got home from a work conference tonight.  I went out to check on the chickens; lo and behold, there were three eggs in the nesting boxes.

On the drive home from the airport, I asked the chicken sitter if there were any eggs.  I was told no - just the ceramic ones I had put in the boxes to teach the chickens where to go. 

So I check on the chickens and everyone is outside scratching around except for the gray naked neck.  But she usually hangs out inside anyway, so I didn't think anything of it.  She was in there eating - a lot.  I had to refill the food and threw out a bunch of treats for her.  Again, didn't think too much of it as this is kind of her routine.

I then looked in the nesting boxes to check on the cermaic eggs.  Didn't see them, but did find three other eggs.  One had a big chunk missing out of it...I'm thinking someone may have been pecking at it.  But hte interior membrane wasn't broken.  This is very good news as it means they haven't gotten the taste of raw egg.  That can be a very bad thing.

One of the other eggs had a crack in it as well.  Again, is someone pecking at them?  Don't know.  The third egg was just right.  They are a little smallish, but that is supposed to be normal for the first couple of eggs.

I don't know if these all came from the same chicken or if multiple chickens are actually laying.  Hopefully wiht the sun coming up earlier now, I can catch one in the act some morning.

This also means a change in food for the chickens...they will be going to a layer feed as soon as the current batch of grower feed runs out this week.