Chicken T.V.

We’ve had some drama around the homestead lately, I like to call it “As the Chicken Coop Turns”.

My amazing friend, Sam, took this picture of The Ladies

One of our laying hens has gone broody.  Which means she’s decided to sit on some eggs and hatch them.  There are a couple problems with this.

1. We have no rooster so the eggs are unfertilized.  She could sit on them forever but would never get chicks.
2.  She is hogging the only nest that the chickens will lay in leaving the other ladies nest-less.
3.  Because they are nest-less the other chickens have decided to go rogue and lay somewhere else.
4.  We have yet to find out where that “somewhere else” is.

We gave her a day or two to see if she got bored but of course, she didn’t.  Then it was time for a plan (or many plans).  At first we tried kicking her out of the coop for a while but all she did was stand in front of the coop door and squawk until we had to let her back in (she was keeping Matilda up from her nap).  Next we tried replacing the eggs with ice cubes.  Now, you would think that shock her into moving but, nope.  The bird was determined to warm up those “eggs” and just ended up with a wet bum.  Finally, we tried tempting her with lettuce and thats what finally got her up.
Apparently a belly full of salad scraps is all she needed to shake the mothering instinct…who knew?!

Where did the eggs go?

Of course, this all took a few days and by that time the other girls had happily found other places to lay their eggs.  We have hunted high and low and still can’t find them.  We followed them around the yard, crawled under the porch and the shed, and still nothing.

We have kept them all in the coop for the last two days to get them back in the habit of laying inside.  By this weekend we’ll let them out again and hopefully things will be back to normal.

Who knew chickens could be this dramatic?

*Linking up with: Homestead Barn Hop, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways