Yesterday I headed out to the chicken coop with two gallons of water, some stale bread, and a rotting pumpkin for the compost pile. Dumped the pumpkin and went to the coop and started dumping waters and refilling them, filling feeders, and throwing bread to both flocks, when I noticed that one of my WL/EE hens wasn't with the rest of the flock. So I checked the nesting boxes thinking maybe she was laying, but she wasn't there. And then I had a thought, the big flock had given my mom trouble over the weekend by roosting in the old coop which I had opened up to return Kernel and the cochin's cage to its owner.
So I headed out to the old coop and peeked inside, to find her sitting in the second nesting box from the door. So I went in and picked her up to discover that she was sitting on 4 unfrozen green and and one unfrozen brown. So I kicked her off the nest, gathered the eggs, and attempted to shut the door. The problem with the old coops door even when it was used everyday, is that that it swells and dirt builds up around the bottom so it doesn't want to shut. So after months of no real use it wanted nothing to do with closing, so it's currently open a couple inches until it's a little bit warmer.
One of the frozen eggs was past the point me even wanting to feed it to the animals the other three I let thaw and feed to the dog and cats. The pretty warm brown one shows that my CM is back in production and there was two green eggs layed in the coop when I kick out the WL/EE who then added her green egg to the mix. Meaning all the hens except for the bantam cochin are laying! The bantam cochin are also currently in lock down because the have figured out how to fly the fence, which hopefully I'll be able to improve shortly. But they (the cochins) probably won't be laying until spring. So happy valentines to me, 8 eggs out of 7 hens!
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