Spent some of the morning in the henhouse and yard: trying yet again to keep the girls in the pen by covering the one small hole in the netting. It’s difficult for them to get out: fly straight up then fly/bobble across the netting. Only one or two are willing to attempt it but my goal is to have 100% of them in the yard, where they are protected from predators. Plus, at least one of the routine escapees can’t get back in so she ends up in the bushes by the cottage. Finding a black chicken in shrubbery in the dark is a little bit of a challenge, and she isn’t happy about being lifted and returned to the henhouse for the night.
In working in the yard, we discovered several very muddy eggs under the platform. The first ones for this group! And I found one more in the henhouse itself on the shelf where the nesting boxes are sitting. I washed them–four in all–cleaned up the nesting boxes and nestled the eggs in fresh hay as en encouragement for them to lay where I want. It’s no guarantee they will do so: my experience with chickens is that they lay where they want. But we shall see.
They seem a bit late on laying but I guess we finally got the right combination of feed and light so the rest should follow along pretty quickly. All of these have a light greenish tint to them so it points to them coming from the Americaunas, of which we have two varieties. That’s a silver one in the picture. They are easily recognized by their fluffy faces.
I also pulled up old hay from under the roosting bars and replaced it with fresh. The sun is out after a week of rain and wet snow so I have the door propped open.