Monday, October 8, 2007

Hen House Happenings


The hens have flourished in the past week. Their egglaying is quite haphazard, some are using the nesting boxes, others are more random. Some days we get several eggs, some days one or two. We've probably had around 25 eggs in the last week. In the past few days we've kept them in the henhouse for longer periods as, apparently, that is how they learn where to head for at dusk. Hens, especially battery ones, have to learn 'stranger danger' ie to keep out of the reach of foxes at night. This evening only 2 needed lifting into the house whereas last week we were chasing the little devils around their enclosure (immensely hilarious if anyone was watching!). Rather bizarrely they crowd into the 3 nesting boxes, this evening 8 of them were squashed into the 3 small boxes.


We've now named 3 of them - Amanda, Dora and Maisie. Amanda is the one with most attitude also the one which has 'oven ready' areas of no feathers; Dora and Maisie have the darkest feathers, with Maisie having crops of white to differentiate.


The photo is of Amanda.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Enjoying your blog which is providing some entertainment while I'm having my lunch on a wet Tuesday in Wyboston.

Love to you all,
Ann

Sue Thomas said...

Hi Steve and Dinks,

The hens look great and we look forward to sampling your eggs sometime!
Glad to see the construction is going well, I am very interested in the civil engineering so thanks for all the detail on the designs. Glad to see the delay wasn't too long and easy to sort out. Hope its not too wet there its very wet here in Oxford.

Love Sue

Debs said...

Weather-wise its fine here, in any case there will be little house building work here until 29th when the timberframe kit arrives. The hens appear to be 'trained' to go into their house at dusk now with just one hiding in the corner of the field last night - I think it was 'lost'...