Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Girls Get Down to Business


Babies get all the attention, and our Leghorn hens must be feeling a little left out of late. The Girls are doing fine. We're consistently getting fourteen to seventeen eggs a day and the sizes are getting larger. They have a pen larger than our living room and kitchen combined, incorporating five large, old spruce for protection and shade. They happily scratch and cluck all day, particularly enjoying the couple of mole hills in the pen. They've gotten very comfortable in their makeshift coop; we no longer find any eggs outside under the trees, they are all in the coop. As the real coop gets constructed, we wonder about transitioning them into their new home. We may take their nest boxes and move them into the new structure, for some familiarity.
We wonder why we're not getting more eggs in a day. Officially, hens lay every twenty four to twenty eight hours, so maybe the Girls are just not co-ordinating their schedules. We've also wondered if Funky Butt is capable of laying with her deformed rear end (is that politically correct to label her?) The first hen we ever named was Old Mama, because she seemed bigger and older from day one. Maybe the supplier snuck a mature hen in and she IS older and not laying consistently. She has seemed more lethargic in this heat, as well. Well, nothing to do but wait and see!

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