I have this 9 month old Rhode Island girl that seems to wander off our property everyday and ends up in the empty fields behind the house. She is the only one out of 60 hens that practices this behavior. Whenever I am out tending to the rest of the girls, she comes running to the fence, paces back and forth, cackling frantically as if a preditor is after her. I have to scale two fences to go and rescue her everyday and join her with the rest of the gals. Only does this once a day, and is present at every roll call at night in the henhouse. I have tried talking to her about this behavior, even put her in lock down to break the habit, have tried bribing her, but continues to venture off. My fear is the neighbors cat sit in prey in that big field, just waiting to get a chance to dine on a chicken! Well today, I was not the happy camper having to scale the fences to reclaim her, as I was already out of my farm clothes and dressed for town. After scaling the fences, in my nice clothes, I couldnt find her. All of a sudden, I get a glimpse of some brown feathers tucken in between the this tall thick grass. As I spread opened the grass, lo and behold she was, with a nest of almost 90 eggs! They were in various sizes from her first egg, all the way up to a large egg! She had neatly dug out a deep nest in the dirt, and was using the tall grass to cover the eggs when she is not there so nothing was visable! She hasnt been sitting on them, as she is always there for roll calls and all the eggs were very cool as if they had been refrigerated. I took my treasure of eggs home, put them in a pot, and not a single one floated to the top! Curiosity led me to crack open one of the first eggs she laid and it had all the characteristics of a fresh egg; standing firm, with the cords in place, was just remarkable!
