Thursday, September 26, 2013

New hens and nesters.

 Chickens are hilarious! I just spent a few hours this morning cleaning out the sheep shelters and putting up a new chickens nester. I put this one up in the next stall. The coop is to the right. I had this old wire nester out back in the goat barn, so got it cleaned out and brought it up here. I have 34 hens now, so thought I might need a few more nest boxes. But do I really?




The white hen jumped right up and started getting her nest all nice and fluffed up.


Then this other white hen jumped up and decided this was a great nest box so she got in too. They love each other so much they have to lay eggs together. Silly chickens!



Even over here in the coop. Togetherness is the key. Why mess up a whole other nest box, right?


These are the new girls. I picked them up after the market last night. One of the other vendors went to a 4H auction last weekend and got these for me. They are Black Sex Link and 3 of them look like Black Austrolourpe. 3 of them have had their beaks clipped. I hate that! Why? But they all look good. One has a crooked foot but seems fine.

They will stay in this tractor a few days til they all get to know one another. Then I'll let them out after I put the others back in. Then eventually they all need to go in the big coop. Right now, the 4 black hens and Black Bart the rooster, still go in their little chicken tractor at night and the others go in the coop. I'll just have to take that one away and get the black ones to go in the coop.



Some of the others coming to say hello. Black Bart was doing his thing earlier. Introducing himself to them. It was kind of cute.



So now I have 34 hens and a rooster. And he has not crowed yet. He's about 5 months old I think. When will he start crowing? I really miss that. He's a handsome boy too. So hopefully I'll start getting more eggs. There were a lot of hens in several nesters awhile ago.

2 comments:

Kristin said...

Wow, that's a lot of chickens. My girls tend to share nests too and it's never in the nesting box. We currently have a nest behind the alfalfa in the loft, one on the floor in the coop, and one on a shelf in the barn. Silly girls.

Kris said...

Mine used to do that too at our other farm. I had a White Leghorn that would lay an egg every day in the garage on the bottom shelf way in the back. And a few game hens would lay in the milk room on the highest shelf.