Day 2199 Coop Chaos

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Happy hens, but there’s trouble in the coop.

Tim and I are getting fewer eggs these days, and it looks like we’ve got a known egg eater in the house. I placed three ceramic eggs in the nesting box, one of the usual tricks for stopping this behavior, but it hasn't worked. The yolk we’ve seen on one of our Leghorns’ feathers has revealed her as the culprit, and her bad behavior needs to end.

I’ll be watching closely this weekend, gathering up any fresh eggs hourly to try to beat her to the box. But this can’t go on. Another remedy people swear by is filling an egg with mustard. It can’t be easy to pull off, but I may have to give it a try.

I can’t have a hen eating eggs—what the heck? This is the first time I’ve dealt with this behavior, and hopefully it will be the last. I’m just afraid bad habits are contagious, and I can’t have that spreading through the flock.

I may have to isolate the culprit until she stops, but with three identical White Leghorns, I need to make sure I catch the right one. It’s not as if they aren’t well fed: daily grain, scratch, dried bugs, and fresh leftovers. Notice the cucumber mid-air in the photo?

The Leghorns have been both my best and least favorite breed. They produce beautiful white eggs, cranking out one every day like little machines. But they’re skittish birds—not friendly like the Reds—a bit crazy... and now this!

So if this one is found to keep up this bad behavior, she might just find herself in a chicken pot pie.

Thank goodness the weekend is here so I have time to deal with my coop chaos, get my birds back in line, and hopefully stop this behavior.

At least our basement cat isn’t giving us any trouble. She’s been napping peacefully on the chair in front of the stove and doesn’t even run away when we go downstairs. I’m not sure she realizes she has the entire house to explore. Maybe it’s overwhelming after being in a cage for almost a year. Hopefully she’ll start investigating all the rooms and discover that her world keeps getting bigger.

For now, she’s happy in the basement family room and occasionally ventures up to the dining room and living room. Someday, I hope she’ll join me in the kitchen, or even wander upstairs to the bedrooms. One step at a time.

Meanwhile, I'll be moonlighting as an egg-eater investigator! Isn’t it crazy what skills we acquire along life’s journey? Imagine that on my résumé.?

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson