When You Know Egg-sactly Where You Want to Go

Electra in her natural environment

My hens have decided that laying their eggs in the chicken coop is not always the best choice.  I think the dogs have something to do with it, as Chamois seems to know that she can snack at the egg smorgasbord during the day when she hears the hens' 'announcements'.  My girls realise that their eggs aren't safe, so then choose somewhere new and less obvious to lay their 'bum-nuts' (there is some Australian vernacular for you Canadians!).

It is a weekly challenge to find the new favourite laying spot.  You would be surprised at how hard it is to find these secret stashes in the garden.  Suddenly you notice 16 eggs hiding under a shrub, or a nice little nest nestled in the centre of a grassy plant.  Unfortunately, once you find one of these spots and raid it, with the bottom of your t-shirt turned into a handy carrying basket chock full of yummy chicken goodness, the hens decide that it's not a safe spot any more and move on.  And the hunt begins again.

As you know, chickens like to sing the song of their people after they lay an egg, and are quite proud of the fact that they have yet again produced this item from their fluffy little bottoms.  Upon hearing such songs, I drop whatever I am doing in the house to try and find the secret place.   The tricky little girls have usually started their announcement away from where the incident occurred, and I am no closer to the treasure.  It is so frustrating - you can walk around and around the same part of the garden and not find anything, and then a week later happen to glance over at a different angle and voila!  Eggs...and lots of them.



Tee-hee, another Star Trek meme



All of the eggs-hausting sleuthing has led me to egg-streme measures and turned me into a bit of a stalker.  The other day I went to feed the chooks their kitchen scraps and top up their food, and Electra was running back and forth, desperate to be out and free-range.  When I let them out, unlike the other hens who started clucking and scratching at the ground for tasty morsels, her little legs were working like pistons as she headed up the yard like a kid with a turtle-head poking out (you know what I mean).  'A-ha', I thought, 'Electra is on a mission.'

As I started to follow her, she noticed what I was doing, and promptly stopped to stand innocently in the yard. 'Nothing to see here' was what she was thinking.  Okay, two can play that game.  I stopped following her and looked nonchalantly around the yard.  Clearly fooled by my great acting abilities, she started back on her trek.

Electra & Sesame

This game of cat and mouse (or human and hen, if you will) continued up the yard, past the house and into the top garden, with plenty of stops and starts along the way.  I was being tricky peering around the corner of the house, my eagle eye peeled for any sign of her sneaking into a hidey-hole.  There was a slight panic when I lost sight of her, but I found her again.

Snuggled deep into some ornamental grass, she wiggled her bottom into a comfortable position and tried not to look at me.  I left her alone - this egg-laying business can take awhile and now I knew where she was.  Of course, she knew that I knew, and I knew that this nest would be abandoned after today.  But I was egg-static - I found a great pile of eggs when I went back later (and yippee, I beat that bloody dog to them too!).

Fortunately they do return to vacated nests after a period of time, so my circuit of egg-checking becomes larger and larger as I add new locations to my list.

I must keep my eye on Electra for other reasons as well.  She disappeared last December for 3 weeks - we thought the neighbour's dog had got her - and then re-appeared with a lovely little flock of chicks.  Which means she had an egg-cellent hiding spot somewhere in the yard.  I'm onto her now, and if she disappears again, we'll be scouring the foliage for that particular fowl.  While chicks are great, dealing with unwanted roosters is much too stressful for me.  So I will continue my egg-hunts, and continued to  njoy our tasty, free-range organic bum-nuts.