Eggs (week ending 5/28): 47*Right now I'm marveling at the efficiency of my Bantam-sized Silkie/Cochin cross. According to my coop calendar, she started to lay eggs at the age of 25 weeks. She laid 16 eggs over the next 20 days, and at 27 1/2 weeks, went broody. As I said, it's very efficient - lay just long enough to produce a good sized clutch of eggs and then hatch them out.
Eggs (through 5/31): 18**
Eggs (month of May): 183
Eggs (year to date): 927
*Includes 4 Bantie eggs and one broken egg
**Includes one broken egg
(Incidentally, there's been a recent discussion on Backyard Chickens about what breed of chickens are the best brooders, and so far Silkie/Cochin crosses are getting the most votes. On the other hand, the other cross, which I named Beaker due to its resemblance to a certain Muppet, has yet to lay or brood.)
Unfortunately, she won't be hatching out any of her own eggs this time. One was used when I made a meal called Mountain Man Breakfast a couple of weeks ago (a real heart stopper: a pound of bacon, a dozen eggs, a pound of hash browns, a pound of shredded cheddar, an onion, and covered with salsa and sour cream) and the remainder became elegant little bite-size mini-deviled eggs (Hint: my wife had to use an icing dispenser to get the deviled yolks back into the tiny halves of the whites). Instead she is sitting on nine large-to-jumbo sized eggs from my other layers. She started out with seven, but while she was off the nest eating, a couple of hens slipped into her space and added a couple more. They've since (mostly) started using the nest boxes again.
The whole project of covering the plastic box with duct tape (to darken the inside) for use as a nest box was a failure. My wife speculates that the inside was just too big for their comfort. So I brought back the wooden floor duplex, and that seems to be the nest of choice for many of them now. I had to mark the eggs in the cubbyhole nest because a couple of hens keep trying to add to the broody's load. I used a carpenter's pencil at first, but that seems to be rubbing off after a day or two. I read on the Backyard Chickens board where some folks use a Sharpie marker, so I'm going to re-mark the eggs tonight. I wanted to use a Sharpie earlier, but was afraid of bleed-through. I guess that's not an issue.
Other farm drama:
The chicks from the Class of 2005 have reached the raptor stage at the age of six weeks. This is what I call the point at which they eat all the food before it gets refilled, and when it does, they descend like predatory creatures on the feeder. It may be about time to turn them loose. But not before I get pictures for the Chicken Genetics page I want to do.
I thought about moving the broody into the nursery, but I don't know if I'll have much luck. I tried to move her into the plastic box with no luck. And when I tried to move the broody Wyandotte late last year, that led to disaster, too. I'll probably just let her sit where she is.
I also moved one of the doe goats in with the wethers. She doesn't need to eat the more expensive high protein food that the pregnant and milking does are getting. She 's getting cantankerous, and it's looking more and more like she's not pregnant - just fat. Yesterday she escaped when my wife opened the chicken coop for me. As my daughter (maturely) said, "She's eating, she's obnoxious, she'd not giving milk and she's not pregnant, so she's not contributing anything to the farm." Looks like a sale could be in the future, especially if it means my daughter can keep another one of the kid goats.
This weekend: building the Chicken Tractor. I found a whole bunch of pre-cut pieces of wood that are two feet long - perfect, I think, for making a small tractor. I've had a problem finding long pieces of wood that don't weigh a ton, but I think the answer is in front of my face - the willow tree that the goats killed when they 1) ate the low leaves off of, then 2) stood on the branches to make them lower and then ate the tall leaves, and then 3) ate the bark off, effectively finishing the tree off. Several of the branches look like they'd be of suitable length for the top lengths of the tractor. Besides, it'd be kind of a rustic looking thing, given that most of the two foot pieces I found are finished on one side. I plan to take pics of the process and post those, too.
