AND...I spoke too soon.
Gave the Rottentoo a shower this morning. He screams like I just dumped scalding lava on him but then runs circles around and around through the shower stream, when he could have easily avoided it so......
I had him in the downstairs bathroom until he finished dripping dry, yes I do towel him off but still, it's easier to keep him on tile to finish drying than him deciding to crawl into the corner of a couch or something and get that all damp and dank. anyways.
I hear him 'clucking' in the bathroom, figuring WTF? so I go in there, and I hear one of the hens outside doing her egg song, and Paco is doing his darndest to imitate. How cute right??? wait a minute.... the coop and nest are wayyyy over there, NOT under the bathroom window, why is she under the window doing the song behind the bushes? SO I go out and look and sure enough there are 3 eggs that were quite cleverly stashed right up next to one of the bushes. You'd have never seen them unless you were looking for them. 2 of them failed the float test, so in the compost they went, one was still warm, so I am assuming that is the one she just laid. She also has an issue with not wanting to use the nesting box and rather dig into the straw in the floor and lay anyways...
From this point moving forward, she does not get to free range until I see her pop an egg into the nesting box. She's skittish towards people to begin with so this is no problem actually. THe other ones I can literally pick up and pluck out of the coop, they go free. Ill close the nesting box off to her, let her use her floor in the coop, and the others are actually used to jumping back into the box / coop via the nesting box anyways so they get to lay up there, she gets to in the coop.
Any suggestions how to break a hen of free nesting? or is this something that I am just going to have to put up with, like them going broody etc?
Aaron