I'm wondering whether one or more of our girls is hiding eggs. We have 7 hens - 4 have been laying for a couple of months, and 3 of them have only just started in the last couple of weeks.
The 4 older girls were using one nestbox in the right hand corner of the coop. I kept a bale of fresh hay in the left hand corner. When the next 2 started laying, they squeezed themselves onto the top of the hay and made themselves a nest. I found 2 pullet eggs in there one day so I pushed the hay further across and put a nestbox in the left hand corner. I figured if they wanted to lay there, so be it, at least they could do it in a box.
Anyway, all eggs are now laid in the left hand box. The older girls have completely abandoned the right hand nest. The problem is that sometimes there are 5 eggs, sometimes 6 and occasionally 7. When there are 5 eggs, there are not always 4 big eggs, so one of the bigger girls could be missing an egg, rather than the pullets.
My girls are now completely free range from morning til night. Their coop is secure with a wire section for them to scratch around in, and they get locked in there overnight - too many foxes around. Our dogs have decided they no longer want to eat the chickens (long, strange story to that decision), so we let them out. We have a fence around the vineyard, which is where their coop is at the moment, but they can get over it and under it - it is mainly to keep kangaroos from eating the grapes.
Anyway, I am wondering whether some of the girls are laying eggs away from the nestbox. Will they do that some days, and not others or do they like to lay in the same spot every time?
