- Aug 17, 2009
- 2
- 0
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Hi!
we have 6 chickens, 2 marans and 2 light sussex over a year old, and 2 new 'bluebell' pullets, who we got at about 9 weeks old in june.
Aside from a few moments when we got the new girls, us daring to go on holiday for a week, and the steaming hot weather the laying is fairly consistent.
The pullets started laying about 10 days after we got them, and were fairly regular, tho initailly preferred a hard to get to bush to the nest boxes!! Lucky we have kids who could get in a retrive the eggs!
We can easily tell apart all the eggs, the marans are quite a dark brown a speckled, the sussex pailer, and have a kinda speckly at one end, and the new girls do tiny little pale ones!
After our hol it took them a while to get back into their rhythm, tho they were nearly all perfectly happy to lay for our neighbour while we were away! We think they were sulking! However, a new development is this... most days we are getting 4-6 eggs in the nesting boxes, inc at least one of the small bluebell eggs, however, when they come out the coup in the mornings, we are also finding 2 soft shelled small eggs under the perch the bluebells sit on.
The bluebells, one of the marans and the sussex all cluck loudly to annouce when they have done an egg, and we are usually able to work out which egg belonged to which chicken by size and appearance, so how have we had 2 days with 7 eggs a day (2 of which were soft shelled)???????????
Could the pullets be doing a soft and hard one each day. I have looked all over the internet, in our many books and magazines, but I cant find anything helpful. Im not too worried about them, and they have plenty of grit in their food, plus they have a garden full on stones and gumpf during the day, and are capable of doing a hard shelled normal egg!!
Has anyone else experienced this? and is there a 'scientific' answer
Thanx!!
we have 6 chickens, 2 marans and 2 light sussex over a year old, and 2 new 'bluebell' pullets, who we got at about 9 weeks old in june.
Aside from a few moments when we got the new girls, us daring to go on holiday for a week, and the steaming hot weather the laying is fairly consistent.
The pullets started laying about 10 days after we got them, and were fairly regular, tho initailly preferred a hard to get to bush to the nest boxes!! Lucky we have kids who could get in a retrive the eggs!
We can easily tell apart all the eggs, the marans are quite a dark brown a speckled, the sussex pailer, and have a kinda speckly at one end, and the new girls do tiny little pale ones!
After our hol it took them a while to get back into their rhythm, tho they were nearly all perfectly happy to lay for our neighbour while we were away! We think they were sulking! However, a new development is this... most days we are getting 4-6 eggs in the nesting boxes, inc at least one of the small bluebell eggs, however, when they come out the coup in the mornings, we are also finding 2 soft shelled small eggs under the perch the bluebells sit on.
The bluebells, one of the marans and the sussex all cluck loudly to annouce when they have done an egg, and we are usually able to work out which egg belonged to which chicken by size and appearance, so how have we had 2 days with 7 eggs a day (2 of which were soft shelled)???????????
Could the pullets be doing a soft and hard one each day. I have looked all over the internet, in our many books and magazines, but I cant find anything helpful. Im not too worried about them, and they have plenty of grit in their food, plus they have a garden full on stones and gumpf during the day, and are capable of doing a hard shelled normal egg!!
Has anyone else experienced this? and is there a 'scientific' answer
Thanx!!
