Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => Chicken Chat => Topic started by: lmpd on October 30, 2011, 21:58
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Our 5 ex-batts have been laying a pretty steady 4 eggs a day, which has tailed off to 1 or 2 with the nights getting shorter. However, today my wife heard one of them in a very tight bit of hedging in the garden. I sent my eleven year old to investigate (she is the only one of us small enough to get anywhere near) and low and behold - she pulled out a stash of sixteen eggs!!!
We did do the 'see if they float test' and they were all fine!!!
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Wonder if it's something to do with the time of year? I found 10 on Sat behind the woodpile in their run. I swear they looked guilty when I found the 'nest'.
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I often find secret stashes of eggs - when I do I always write the date in pencil on a couple and put them back (replacing with new ones every couple of days) so that the hens don't run off and find a new place to lay :).
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We found 24 under our enormous fir tree last thursday- They were being laid by 2 chickens, one had only just come into lay and I was suspicious she was laying but couldn't find the eggs, the other was an adult hen who had always laid in the nest box ???
We collected them all (all were good to eat :D) and for some strange reason from the next day, they started laying in the hen house, even the young one :unsure: Why I have no idea ???
They are funny, I can ever work them out ::)
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I found a secret stash in the nest box of all places today. Something strange is happening as we currently only have two layers. I collected 1 yesterday morning at 7.30 and when I closed up last night and evicted the pekins from the nest boxes at 10pm there no eggs. I'm positive there were no eggs this morning but when I gave the coop a quick spruce up just now at 3.30pm there were 4 eggs in the box. All mid brown and medium to large.
The mystery is that we have 4 pekins (can't be any of those), two legbars who haven't started laying yet (even if they don't lay blue they shouldn't be brown) and our two laying hybrids. The only thing I can think of is that some eggs had got buried under the straw in the nest box though this seems really unlikely as it's not that deep.
Any suggestions?
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Thats funny, tomorrow I'm going on an egg hunt !!!!
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I LOVE reading about secret egg stashes, they always make me smile. I must go on an egg hunt too, as I am down in egg numbers from the free-range girlies. The Posh birds have just started a second burst of laying, so silkie, choc orpie, pekin AND cream legbar eggs to put in my incie ready for Christmas babies :)
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We had 5 white leghorns, all laying daily, then we went sian to 4 eggs a day, the weather was very wet, si we put it down to that. One afternoon, just before dark, I went to check on the hens and noticed gunk coming down from the shade netting which was about 5 foot off the ground. I looked, expecting ti see a dead animal, instead, I found 17 whole eggs and aprox 4 broken eggs. After that we noticed the hen flying up there every day after that to lay an egg.
Our turkey laid an egg under an old tree root every day, she squeezed under the root, it was a pain to collect her eggs!
Pamela
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Our Sabelpoots have come into lay again and lay in the coop, good girls :) however the large fowl all lay in a conifer where they've made a lovely nest lined with dry conifer leaves, it's just the right height so I don't have to bend down :) so I suppose they're clever girls too :)
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I found a stash of 22 eggs hidden in a patch of sage plants, they were laid by my little hen "Ginger". She was escaping from the pen by squeezing under the gate. Geoff. ;)