Texas

[Auntiejessi3]

Well, I grabbed 6 eggs around noon and brought them a bowl of egg shells and kitchen scraps so hopefully that helps quench their desire to go pecking.

I have a hanging feeder with plenty of free feed oyster shells (just refilled it this month so I know there is plenty) and their treadle was filled last Friday and is plenty full.
I guess I used to bring a bowl of "treats" (kitchen scraps and smushed egg shells) twice/week, but we've been too busy to do it more than once/week lately.

Angela, who has taken residence on top of the coop roof, jumped into the bowl as soon as I got in.

I did notice that they never leave the golf balls and ceramic eggs where they belong. Part of their egg laying routine seems to be to gather/move them around. I took the nesting box dividers out as that is where I mount the cameras to monitor the nesting boxes, but maybe I should consider putting the dividers back and trying to find new camera mounting locations.

How is the egg eating coming along?

 

[ATXInstantFlock]

How is the egg eating coming along?

My junior chicken farmer and I had our coop maintenance day yesterday.
We refreshed all nesting boxes: remove all bedding, wash and scrub dried egg remnants, and added more fake eggs with new bedding to every box.

I'm happy to announce that I collected one egg for every hen for the first time in 25 days. Kinda makes me wonder how many I had lost over the past few weeks. I thought it was 4-5, but maybe I was losing multiple per day.
I'm starting to think it may have started while the kids were on spring break as we extended the time between refilling their feeders. I don't think their food feeder could have gone empty for more than a few hours, at most. Maybe once they got the taste of their own delicious eggs, they stopped caring about their feed.
So crossing my fingers that we're all set now.

 

[ATXInstantFlock]

I was busy looking at tax things earlier today, so I didn't get a chance to do a daytime collection. Glanced at the cameras and I've got two customers ATM. Downside of these new fake eggs that are brown is that they blend in a lot more than my blue/green ones.