Mystery of the Mysteriously Moving Megg---er, Egg

[Casey3043]

Don't really know what category to put this under. Yesterday I found an egg in the backyard. The chickens have NO access to the yard. The dogs are out there a lot and there is a 5 foot fence with an electric wire along the bottom (on the dog side) 6 inches up and 6 inches in to prevent digging. The dogs have NO access to anyplace the chickens can go. Soooo.....how did the egg get to the back yard? It was a small egg, pullet size, and definitely a chicken egg.

I live in a rural area. Have never seen possums, coon, foxes, or skunks around, except as roadkill. (Smelled them occasionally.) These animals would not have been able to come in the yard anyway, due to the three dogs being there and several fences. Have seen a few hawks (small ones). If a hen laid an egg out in the chicken yard instead of in a nest box, as they do occasionally, could a hawk have picked it up and carried it? And why leave it and not eat it? And wouldn't it break if it dropped it? I do have snakes, but they are not active in this cold.

No sign of rats or anything like that around the coops. The egg was undamaged, no tooth marks on it, no cracks. It was frozen solid and rotten. Stunk like a son-of-a-gun when I cracked it. I don't know how long it had been there, but I think I would have noticed it fairly soon. It was right along the path where I go to the workshop to get the chicken feed.

Well, I'm stumped. Any ideas, anyone?

 

[ibpboo]

A stray chicken living in the neighborhood you haven't spotted yet?

A few years ago, I kept finding chicken poop on my front porch, what the heck, then after about the 4th day, there was a chicken coming in to roost at night on my porch. A few days later a second one showed up.

 

[Casey3043]

No, I forgot to mention---no stray, wild, or neighbor chickens that could have left it. Now THOSE I would have noticed!

 

[Bring]

I bet your chickens are flying over the fence. What breed are they? My EE can fly that high, my chochins can't.

 

[Casey3043]

I guess it's possible. The first, last, and only chicken who ever got into the back yard was killed by the dogs, and that was almost 2 years ago. I know my SLW pullets have been seen sitting on top of the fence on the garden side (not the yard side), but I would be very surprised to find that they had come into the yard, laid an egg and then escaped unscathed. And that the egg was there long enough to go bad, what with the three garbage hounds I have here.....

Well, the mystery continues. Maybe I need a "chicken cam"! LOL