Eighteen eggs for the week. A couple of two egg days and a zero egg day took the total down.

The delivery of the yolk seemed to be an isolated incident, and nobody on the Backyard Chicken board seemed upset or emergent by it, which confirmed my suspicions - this is just something that happens from time to time.

This week I put a board up on the top of the nest boxes at about a forty-five degree angle to try and keep some of the pullets from perching on top of it (and leaving piles of by-product behind), but it didn't seem to do the trick... yet. When I closed up the coop last night there were 4 or 5 of the regulars on top of the new addition, trying valiantly to hang on.

Other news from the week in chickens. I found out that Roger is going to be a good rooster when he finishes coming of age. I picked up one of the White Rocks to get it used to be handled and she put up a big squawk. It wasn't a minute before Roger showed up at the coop door, eyeing me suspiciously and attempting a low scolding tone.

As for the other roos, well, Rocky is small and bedraggled and at the bottom of the pecking order. Jean Bob is coming along nicely size and feather-wise, but shows no other roosterly traits. He seems to be almost the fop of the barnyard (perhaps the curse of a French name). He's almost like the Sir Percy Blakeney of the barnyard. I can only hope that Jean Bob has an equally exciting secret life.

A couple of the Reds decided to start laying in the hanging nest boxes this week - maybe their space on the floor was getting too crowded. Another one decided to start laying in the tack room, which is where all the gear for my daughter's harness goats is kept, along with the animal feed.

I solved this problem on Saturday by using a trick I'd learned with Mildred. While I was working, one of the Reds made her way in to the corner where we'd found eggs three days this week. She settled in to deposit an egg, so I let her go for a few minutes and went to put a fresh egg into one of the nest boxes. Then I picked up the hen and moved her to the coop, inside that same box. Later in the day, two eggs, one of which was my plant.

This morning on checking: two eggs. Seems one of the other Reds decided that this particular box was a great place to lay.

I don't know if this trick of moving them when they're getting ready to lay works for everyone, but it's certainly worked well for me.

Ahead: summer kicks into full gear, and waiting to see which of the roos will start crowing first.

Two dozen eggs this week, and lots of grunt work done in the barnyard today. Mostly turning over the manure pile and general cleaning up and maintenance.

Our porch had an old, decrepit lawn chair that I appropriated and have hanging on nails in the tack room. I took it down when I was done and sat for about half an hour, watching the general barnyard behavior of the critters. It was there that I saw the tale of the luckiest moth in the world.

It was a kind of beige color, and was sitting on the chair when I unfolded it. Without thinking, I flicked it off with my finger and it fluttered to the ground. Immediately one of the White Rocks set upon it and chased it for a foot or so until it fluttered into sight of rooster-in-training Jean-Bob. Jean Bob pecked and chased it, at which time it took flight and fluttered across the barnyard. It hit the side of the barn and fell to the ground - right in front of one of the laying New Hamps. She started to chase it, and it went airborne again, and came to light...

Right in front of the same White Rock it escaped from earlier. Again the White Rock tried to eat it, but it took to the air yet again, with the Rock in hot pursuit. It fluttered out into the yard and the Rock eventually gave up the chase.

There was also something that brought cause for concern. The laying Rhode Island Red crouched like it was going to make a mess and something orange yellow came dribbling out - an egg yolk. It was all in the feathers on her rear end, so while she picked at the yolk, I caught her and went about cleaning up. Hanging from the top of her vent was what looked like the collapsed sac of a soft egg shell. I gave it a gentle pull and the whole thing came out, collapsed. No sign of the white.

I'm not sure what caused this chicken equivalent of a miscarriage. The egg could have been bad to begin with, or the hen was stressed - earlier in the day one of the goats picked her up by a mouthful of feathers. It could be that this one is not a real dependable layer, either. She was the last of the Reds to start laying, as far as I know.

Well, some research is now in order.

An interesting morning with the chooks before work. After I'd let the chickens out I heard a loud squawking in the coop. I stepped over in time to see one of the Reds being ridden by one of the... well, they're too old to call them chicks now. I guess you could compare it to a teenaged boy with an older woman in a John Hughes movie.

Here's the interesting thing. It wasn't Rocky, the Roo-In-Training. And it wasn't Jean-Bob, who is starting to look properly roosterly. No, it was another of the Rhodies.

So I did a little research. I caught the offender and looked it over, thinking perhaps it was a dominance thing. Then I compared it to the third Rhodie chick from the Tractor Supply batch. Compared to the third, it was bigger, and had wattles and a comparitively large comb - like Rocky's, only with more "fingers" that were more evenly defined (Rocky's is kind of naturally ragged looking). Add to that the obvious sexual trait I witnessed this morning, and I think it's pretty obvious that I have another roo.

In honor of the occasion (my wife said she's heard this act referred to as "flogging the hen," but she can't recall which side of her family she heard it from), I decided to dub the new roo-apparent Roger, after, um, a British slang term for the very act of genetic congress that I witnessed him performing.

There was another barnyard surprise yesterday. This week the four Reds have pretty consistently produced three eggs a day. I was hoping they'd finish out the week like that, but started thinking that I was overdue for a two egg day. So I went out yesterday to collect and... four eggs.

I guess they're all laying now. And when I was out this morning, the one hen I thought was the slacker was waiting for her turn in the nest box. By the time I was done with barn chores, there were two hens in the box, waiting for nature to take its course.

Farm life: just full of surprises.

It was a busy, non-chicken sort of time last week. The chooks, however, continued to produce, a total of eighteen eggs for the week (four 3-egg days and three 2-egg days).

Not much progress was made on any of the barnyard projects, but hopefully this weekend will allow some things to get done.

There is one more pleasure to recount from all of this. While the young pullets pretty much stay in the barnyard yet, the four Reds continue to wander and explore. They like the myrtle patch right beneath our side porch, and have discovered that the birds visiting the nearby feeders (and the marauding goats) are sloppy eaters, and leave little bits of seed behind. So for the last few days, they've been hanging around the house. It's nice to have them there. No matter what goes on in the world with annoying and alarming headlines, the chickens create this oasis of peace and quiet by simply looking after their own little chicken needs.

Nice.

We harvested three eggs each on Friday and Saturday. That made 17 total for the week, 35 for the month. And there's one Red I'm not sure is laying yet. Perhaps they all are, and there's some mathmatical formula that can be applied to prove they are, with their off-days staggered so I only see three eggs a day.

Saturday I hauled some manure to the site of my father-in-law's garden, and got rid of more by giving it to a green-thumbed friend of mine. I cleaned out the hanging next boxes because the chicks have decided they make nice cons and have started spending the night in them. Fresh straw all around, and I worked on cutting boards for the repairing the floor in the coop.

When I first moved the Rosses in, there were wooden planks for the floor in the front quarter and back quarted of the coop. The rest is dirt floor. So I've salvaged some old lumber from a torn down shed and have been cutting it to size. Hopefully, in two weeks, I'll have all the pieces and the time and will clean out the existing litter, put down the new floor, and then cover it all up again with fresh straw, all in a good day's work. Which means cutting a few more planks over the next couple of days.