A total of 22 eggs this week, a nice jump from last week. Here's the reason why: three of the pullets have started to officially lay eggs.

I discovered this on Friday when, after collecting three eggs in the coop, I went into the tack room and found two more. One was more normal sized, but the other was a small pullet egg. I thought I had two that were starting to lay, and one of the suspects was Shadow - the Red Sex Link that likes to follow me around.

So Saturday I left them in the coop for a while in the hopes that they would learn to make their deposits there. By afternoon there were three eggs in the nest boxes, and I managed to confirm Shadow as one of the layers.

Sunday was a different story. As soon as I opened up the coop, Shadow ran back and forth, looking through the fence into the tack room, running back and forth like a small child that had to find a bathroom - and fast. Then she found her way out of the coop and made a beeline for the tack room. I tried to put her into the nest box, but she kept leaving to go back to the tack room. There was absolutely no way she wanted to lay in the coop.

(Sunday I also found the crushed shell of what looked like a pullet egg in the goat stall - so one of them had been practicing in a bad place - at least there's a lot less traffic in the tack room. I've been meaning to fence it off, but until the layers all start using the coop, I'm loathe to - I'd rather find the eggs in the tack room than go on a hunt in the more inhospitable places in the barn.)

I also determined that the other Red Sex Link, which I named Cinnamon, is the second layer. She was also determined to lay her egg on top of the hay in the tack room instead of the coop. What is interesting is that the RSL eggs are longer than the ones being laid by one of the Reds right now, giving them the illusion that they're bigger. This kind of confirms what I've read on the Backyard Chicken board, which is that RSL's are "egg laying machines."

Research Sunday also showed that one of the Reds is laying in the tack room again. She will have to be re-educated. Finally, I found out that there is a third new layer - one of the Silver Laced Wyandottes. She was going into the bales of straw and had dug out such a cozy little nest that if I hadn't seen her go into it, I never would have found it (at least, until I moved the bale of straw). I waited and moved her to a nest box with an egg in it, and she laid one there within five minutes of my moving her. Her reward was being banded with a red tag on her foot so I know she's a producer (I didn't do this to the RSL's since there are only two and they are easy to tell apart).

So until I can re-educate the hens that are straying from the coop (that sounds so Soviet, don't you think?), it looks like I'm going to have to tread lightly in the tack room.