Broody Betty

A few weeks ago on one of my visits to collect the eggs, I opened the back door and found this:

Betty decided she wanted to hatch some eggs.  This happened earlier in the season once with Farrah Fawcett.

The poor girls get it in their heads that they've got a nice pile of eggs, why not have a seat and try to hatch 'em?  Of course, this won't work, no matter how diligently they sit.  We have no Mr. Chicken to fertilize the eggs.

Betty was not interested in the least in letting me get the eggs, but eventually I coaxed her up and she walked off (maybe in a huff.  Maybe not.  I may have been imagining that).

The eggs underneath her were so toasty warm.  I can see why this would be conducive to chick hatching (again--if that were biologically possible, which it is not).

Fortunately, Betty gave up her plight after just one day.  It took us a week or so to get FF to lay off (oh boy).

Kinda sad, but we certainly don't need any more chickens...

On the Move

The chickens, in case you were wondering, are doing great.  I mean, they have their chicken-ish idiosyncrasies (more on that later), but on the whole we are doing a steady egg business.  Ok, that makes us sound more profitable than we are, but we sell and/or give away about 3 dozen eggs each week, and that is more or less enough to recoup (ha ha) the cost of food for the girls and keep our egg stash to the top shelf of the refrigerator.  We certainly have PLENTY of eggs for ourselves and for Dale and Diane.

Several post topics are rattling around in my head, including:

1) The big eggs--on the inside
2) Traveling chickens
3) Broodiness and bother
4) Egg counts and sizes
5) The hazards of hard-boiling eggs

I'm going with idea 2 for the moment.  Mostly because I've got some pictures.

As you know, the girls are in what's called a chicken tractor, which allows us to move them every so often to a new spot of ground, giving them fresh vegetation and a new collection of bugs to munch.

After 4-7 days in one spot, the girls do a number on the dance floor:

But a few weeks later, BAM!

Here you can see their progress, marked by the revegetating squares of green:

We are fortunate to have access to this big old field to pull them around in, but Diane wants to march them across the front lawn where there is a thin patch of grass and an overpopulation of bugs.  Maybe this fall or next spring...

Here's one more photo of the girls.  Seems wrong not to show you just how fabulous they are and how big they have gotten!

Here are Betty, Liz, and Beth...(or something to that effect).  Farrah Fawcetts were being shy.