The hens love their hen house but they aren't quite sure what to think about the nesting straw.
We couldn't get the hens to lay in the nesting boxes. So we put a beach towel in the boxes since they preferred the tractor seat with the beach towel cushion rather than the hen house.
She sat and sat. We really didn't think the towel would be a good long term idea. But it did get them in the nesting boxes. After the hen laid her egg she accidentally hit it with her foot causing the egg to roll off of the towel. And so we put straw in the boxes so that next time the egg would be carefully cradled. This is what happened.
Belle and Merida are now laying in the nesting boxes as long as there are beach towels in the boxes. When we put the straw in the boxes both hens cleared all of it out making a mess on the hen house floor.
Which of course posed a problem because now they have no beach towel or straw. Hm.
As you can see she looks a little confused. She is looking back through the entrance of the hen house wondering what her next move should be.
She was the first one to start laying and she is determined to lay an egg again on this day.
It's been a few days now. They are both laying eggs. As you can see in the photo it doesn't take long for the eggs to look nice and perfect. In a few days the smaller, paler egg will look like the darker bigger egg. A few days after this photo we had four more hens laying eggs.
All the red hens are laying. Sassy, a Plymouth Rock is now laying, she has the pale one with the specks. It was her first day. And then the blue egg belongs to Hark, our Ameraucana. We just need to get JoJo laying eggs. We have recently discovered that she is a White Plymouth Rock.
This is our JoJo, not the best photo but you can see that she resembles the White Plymouth Rock.
This is a photo from a White Plymouth Rock website. JoJo looks an awfully lot like this. She was supposedly a cornish hen when we purchased her back in March.
We are currently having an issue with Penny's right foot. She favors it when she walks fast or runs. She eats but has not been gaining weight. She is much smaller than the other two Rhode Island Reds. I've been trying to get a good video of her walking and we've been using the process of elimination to try and figure out why she has a limp. I've been isolating her once a day in order to make sure that she is getting a nutritional diet. She eats just fine. But continues to stay small and I believe she has been losing weight this week. She is happy and friendly though. Any suggestions on what might be the problem would be much appreciated.
