chickens are sneaky

Little dinosaurs

Don’t you believe that they aren’t aware of the larger world around them.  My sister calls them The Borg.  Every time they run up to me when I enter the chicken yard, I’m that guy in Jurassic Park when all the little dinosaurs run up to him right before they start to eat him.  It’s eerie, they move the same way.  Consequently, they freak me out a bit, but I am Human and I’ll be darned if I let a bunch of chickens scare me.  They don’t scare easy, by the way.  They are flat out stubborn.

Three hens, one nest

One of the hens started brooding on one of the nests.  This was unusual in itself because supposedly, these chickens had been bred not to brood (ya gotta love the instinct to reproduce, doncha).  Shortly thereafter, the amount of eggs started to decrease til yesterday, all she got was 4 or 5.  She had looked in the coop the other day and there were now two hens brooding on the same nest.  We surmised that the other chickens were sneaking in there and laying eggs in the nest when the brooder got up for food.  We figured pretty soon that hen would be sitting on a hill of eggs.  She called me yesterday, told me our suspicions were confirmed.  The other brooding hen got off the nest when my sister was in the coop.  She counted 11 eggs and those were just the ones she could see.  No telling how many were under the first and main brooding hen. I guess there got to be so many that she called in a helper.  I thought this to be very funny so I went over there Sunday to get some pictures and there were not one or two, but three hens sitting on those eggs all crammed into the same nest.

Chickens or eggs?

She’s still not getting very many eggs and is hesitant to gather any of the ones that are being sat on, not knowing what will be found inside them.  Now she is content to let the hens hatch the ones they have been hoarding but she doesn’t want any more added to the nest.  And now she has to set up a nursery.  Who knew keeping chickens was so much trouble.  You can’t just let them mingle.  Territory and dominance issues that get intensified in a confined space.  Kinda like people.