The only thing I had to report from the week before last was the collection of 47 eggs. From last week, 48 eggs, and 25 already through this evening for an August total of 203. If all of the hens aren't laying yet, they're getting close. I suspect the holdouts are the bottom-of-the-pecking-order White Rock and Eleanor Rigby, the young Rhode Island Red.

Most of the time over the last couple of weeks has been to prepare for the county fair, where my daughter will be showing her goats - one dairy and two harness. Too late I started thinking that maybe I should show Roger - he's turned into one good looking rooster. Maybe next year.

So I'll be at the fairgrounds on and off this week. I was there Monday to run some errands and I checked out the poultry barn to see if there was anything there that caught my interest. There was a beautiful trio of Barred Rocks, but they were bantams, and a trio that I think may have been Partirdge Wyandottes. I'd love to have a PW rooster, but technically I have too many roos as it is. The only reason I don't have trouble, I suspect, is because I let my flock free range.

So I'll be hitting the poultry barn again and signing up for Ross chicks from a local poultry producer (this time they really will end up as dinner). And will I end up bringing more pullets home? Depends on how much money I have at the end of the week and how badly my dear spouse will kill me if I do...

43 eggs this week, up slightly as a couple of Wyandottes have started to produce pullet eggs, and someone else is making soft shelled eggs.

Earlier this week, one of the New Hampshire hens started to go through one of the gaps in the goat fence and paused halfway through. Jean-Bob, the Wyandotte roo, saw her crouched down and immediately his desire took over. He ran after her. He was almost to her when she gave a little hop to the other side of the fence. And Jean-Bob hit the fence like a cartoon cat.

Of the breeds of chicken I have, I like the New Hampshire Reds and the Red Sex Links the best so far. The RSL's have lots of personality, but I've decided they're stubborn. They lay eggs where they want to lay them, and no amount of re-education seems to convince them of otherwise.

Last week we got a load of new hay piled in the tack room, and yesterday one of the RSL's found a small gap between a couple of bales and decided to settle there. I didn't want her to lay there, so I took a broom, and with the broom end, gently coaxed her out. She didn't take well to the disturbance and ran right for me, jumping onto my shoulder and using it like a springboard to flutter out of the tack room. So I have now officially been run over by a tractor, a goat cart, and a chicken.

Some city cousins were over on Sunday and my daughter gave them a ride on the goat cart - good practice for the fair. The less-experienced-on-the-cart goat performed like a champ. Later, when the cousins were gone, we put the more experienced goat on, and he was an utter pill. Didn't want to do anything.

Saturday night dinner: Corned beef hash and a huge mess of eggs.

Forty eggs in a week - now getting five or six eggs a day. A couple of the Wyandottes have started to lay, bringing the numbers up.

Saturday I butchered the White Rock that had cataracts. It was debilitated enough that it couldn't get around in the barnyard - it kept bumping into walls and getting into places in the barn that it couldn't get out of again. I'd been keeping it in a cage in the tack room, where it could find food and water, but I didn't want to keep it there that way. So Saturday I did the deed. We had it last night for dinner and what do you know - it tasted just like chicken.

I also spent some time goat-proofing part of the barn. The goats would hop up on the manger in their stall, come down the other side, then go to the fence in the tack room and help themselves to hay from the bales stored there. So I built a framework that allowed them to eat from the manger, but kept them from jumping up into it. I feel like I really accomplished something, armed with my father-in-law's electric screwdriver.

Evenings I have also been helping my daughter train the goats on harness and cart-pulling in preparation for the fair at the end of the month. Lewis, the bigger of the twin goats, seems to be better and listening to commands and responding to the tug of the reins. Clark is more rebellious, but when I take the lead line out front, he reads my motions and responds accordingly. Since my daughter wants to give goat cart rides to children, she decided this trait made Clark better for that task, and for pulling a cart filled with manure to the garden (my idea) while the stronger Lewis would be better for cart-pulling showmanship and pulling a cultivator to plow the garden (her idea).

The tack room is now filled with fresh hay for the fall/winter. The vet came by to vaccinate and worm them, and work on de-horning the one remaining horn that Lewis is sporting to make him more presentable at the fair. The hens are laying, the roosters are jumping them, and everything at this point seems to be going as it should.

(Holds breath now to see what goes wrong.)

With 34 eggs collected in the last week, that puts the count for the month of July up to 97 eggs collected. Those adept with numbers will be quick to note that one-third of these eggs were laid in the last week.

This is with 6 known layers, and I'm averaging four point something eggs a day. And I think there are some others who are in training to lay, given their behavior of late and the frequent discovery of soft shell eggs.

Over the weekend I attempted to re-educate the hens on where they should be laying by leaving in the coop until early-to-mid-afternoon. Sunday after church I was rewarded with four eggs - all in the same nest box, even - for my efforts.

But Shadow is being a problem child. Under no circumstance does she want to lay in the coop. She wants to take the long way into the tack room and lay in a secluded corner by the door, which is where she began her career not long ago.

I added another next box to the coop over the weekend, one that was part of the original farm and probably hadn't been used in decades. No interest in that one, either. Maybe if I put some strips of burlap up over it to give more of an illusion of privacy.

The roos, in the meantime, continue to practice crowing. Roger, the boss, is by far the best of the three. Jean Bob has most of a crow in place, but tends to cut it short. And poor, pathetic Rocky is just now coming out of the stage where he sounds like a party horn. Maybe I should rent him out for bar mitzvahs and children's parties.