Take THAT, Bertie Lee! You can’t fool us forever! You’re just a chicken, and we are human hen detectives! I think they could start paying me for this egg-finding work. Yep, I finally found where Bertie Lee is currently stashing her eggs. I say currently, because I only found ten. Of course, she could have just started again after finishing molting, or after the cold episode. I don’t know. I’m not a chicken.
Look at all those sort of dirty Bertie eggs! And one very clean Henley egg that was just laid.
Lee helped on this one, because yesterday he said he saw her coming out from behind the work benches again. He thought maybe she was laying in her old spot, which she’d gotten chased out of. So, this morning, I decided to look even harder than usual, and used the step ladder to climb on top of the sturdy old workbench. I looked down behind it, and there they were! Eggs!
Bertie Lee tells Bruce that she’s glad the garage is such a mess, because it’s easy to hide eggs in. Her eggs are secretly under that white cabinet.
Of course, they were in a really hard-to-reach place, as Bertie Lee is a smart hen. She survived the 2019 and 2020 hen attacks that lost us a lot of our flock. I found the perfect egg-moving device however, our fishing net. I was able to carefully roll them forward and get them, without injury to me or any eggs. Well, two of the eggs were cracked, but I think Bertie must have done that herself, since the mess was dried up.
When I brought the eggs in, I immediately tested them for viability by seeing if they floated, just like I did a couple of days ago when I found Big Red’s egg stash. These were all in GREAT shape, with only one looking slightly iffy. I put it in with Big Red’s, along with a couple others, ready for becoming deviled eggs for Easter!
Bertie is trying to tell Buttercup to hide her eggs better, but Butter is focused on bugs.
Now I have seven hens capable of laying, and six of them are active (I hope; I couldn’t find Springsteen this morning, and she’s the low chicken in the pecking order). Theoretically, I may have enough to start giving eggs away again. And I can’t wait to see if Star hatches any baby hennie chicks! She’s still in there, setting away.
She knows she’s my favorite. Don’t tell Buttercup.
What a great way to start a day off! The Sherlock Holmes of Laying Hens strikes again! I’ve already had my personal Easter egg hunt.
This one had us laughing much of last night. You may remember that not too long ago, I used my chicken detective skills to discover that my Hermits’ Rest hens had decided to start laying eggs in an artificial Christmas wreath on top of our garage refrigerator. I’d looked high and low, but finally saw Springsteen up on the fridge in the middle of the day, looking very much like she was laying an egg. Now everyone lays there except Bertie Lee (mystery location) and Star, who’s brooding three eggs in the nest box, where they are supposed to be laying eggs. I just climb up on the fridge every day and retrieve the eggs. Not an elegant solution, but it works.
There’s one more chicken, though. Big Red lives with Apache and Fiona, and I hadn’t gotten an egg from her in over a year. Hmm.
I think I’m a horse.
What’s Red’s Story?
Well, once upon a time about three or four years ago, there was a chicken coop and run over the cabin on the greater ranch property. At one point, two people decided to raise some chicks, and got like two dozen production red chicks and two dozen black meat chickens. It was fun to watch them grow and grow. (Here’s a link to a longer story from 2018; podcast listeners can search for chickens on the blog and find it.)
I really loved these guys.
Soon we were getting a LOT of eggs (I say “we” because I took care of them when their caregivers were out of town). I dutifully trotted them up to the neighbors’ storage area and labeled them, where they got sold at farmer’s markets.
Fast forward, and one partner stopped coming around, the residents at the cabin moved out, and I ended up being the caretaker. More babies arrived, some we bought and some that came as gifts. I became the half owner. We ended up with Americaunas, barred rocks, leghorns, and more and more. I sure enjoyed all those chickens, and enjoyed selling my half at work.
Yep, the neighbors had a LOT of chickens back in the day. That’s Buckbeak, the nice rooster, in the center.
At some point, an owl began systematically eliminating the chickens, including the wonderful rooster we had back then. Sniff. I felt powerless, because there was no roof on the chicken yard, and a hole in the door to the coop, which allowed owls in. But it wasn’t my coop, so I couldn’t exactly work on it. The other partner was going to make the hens all into sausage, so I took over as the queen of the dwindling flock. It was sad.
I decided to let nature take its course (which was awful, with so many dead hens), and to just get myself my own chickens at my house, with an enclosed coop, where they would be easier to care for and less vulnerable. As we know, the joke was on me, because we still lose chickens to predators over at our part of the ranch, though we have been working hard on keeping the chickens safe…at least when they are young. The old ones insist on living outside.
Well, I thought all the chickens over there were gone and stopped feeding them. But, soon we realized there was still ONE old chicken left. That’s Big Red. She outlived them all. She was out scrounging for bugs and grain over by the horse area. That made sense.
Plenty to eat around here! (August 2020)
We’ve enjoyed her antics with Fiona and Apache, especially when she drinks from the big troughs. We never found any eggs, but once found her laying an egg with no shell. That led me to start bringing some chicken feed over to her, which we give her when we feed the horses.
She’s a fine hen, and that’s no bull. (This beefy guy is behind our house.)
Once she started eating, she began to look better and better. She doesn’t look at all like an “old” hen, and she’s friendly as heck. She made it through the cold weather, too, and had a nice warm place to hide out. For the past few weeks, though, we’d been wondering if her improved nutrition has enabled her to start laying. I put on my detective hat again.
I’ve been looking in various spots, like the storage area, the cattle pens, etc. No eggs. Then, day before yesterday, I heard an odd noise in the old chicken run. There was Big Red, scratching away. Hmm, I hadn’t seen her over there in a long, long time.
So, yesterday, on a whim, I decided to take a look in the nesting boxes where the hens used to all lay. Oh my goodness. There were 9 lovely Big Red eggs in there!
What??? Eggs!
Well, of course. The great egg detective figured out that the eggs were in the egg boxes. Go me!
Which egg in the Easter basket is not from Big Red?
I took the eggs home, curious as to whether I’d found fresh eggs or ancient eggs. I tested them in a bowl of water, and while none of them floated (which means they aren’t old, rotten, bad, and such), a few of them were iffy. They are marked for future hard boiled eggs.
It’s hard to tell, but this is a picture of the eggs NOT floating.
My guess is that, at her age, Big Red is laying a couple of times per week, so these eggs may be from about the time the cold weather event occurred. I’ll be checking daily from now on, so I’ll know how often she’s laying. I’m so surprised and pleased that she’s still churning out eggs, especially since the production hens tend to lay a lot for the first year, then pretty much stop after their second year. Way to go, Big Red!
Now Suna the great hen detective needs to solve the Bertie Lee mystery. She should still be laying…somewhere.
I think my high school cafeteria used to serve “tuna surprise,” and I want to assure you that I’m not eating my chickens. But I did get a nice surprise this morning!
I went out to let the chickens and guinea fowl out this morning before work, and was chatting with Fancy Pants, Bertie, and Gertie as usual, when I heard the sounds of some rooster-on-hen action going on. I turned my head to see Clarence working away on a black-and-white hen. Since I have three of those, I couldn’t tell who it was until the act was finished.
There’s a reason I’m running, and it’s not to get a grasshopper.
Lo and behold, it was Hedley, the former Hedy, who I’d renamed because I thought they were a rooster. Well, I guess not, since neither of the other roosters has shown an interest in each other, which rules out rooster love. This is a real relief for me, since my hen to rooster ratio is already a bit off (need more hens). AND we have discovered that Gray Gertie is a guinea cock, not a guinea hen (based on his calls, and now his unfortunate hen-chasing behavior).
Gertie is a growing boy, so now poor Hedly has to run from both him and Clarence (and Bruce, who was lollygagging in the henhouse when I took this).
Now I know who’s laying the white eggs, too, since Hedley is way bigger than Henley, the other Ancona hen, who has a pink comb (for those of you keeping notes). It’s always something with these guys. At least all is well in the world of Big Red, the hen who is a member of the horse herd.
I’m a horse. A shiny red horse.
I got this photo of her yesterday, running over to the water bucket when she realized it was her favorite time of day: when the water is fresh and full for her easy access. That is one pampered solo hen, with her special feed bag of treats and water bucket.
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The Hermits' Rest 