Who Knew Chickens Played April Fools?

Well, those little feathery tricksters sure pulled one over on me. I went out to look for eggs this morning. A little Buff Orpington just couldn't wait to get out of the coop proper and head over to the "brooding area" which is empty. She seemed a little frantic, which was weird but I didn't think much of it. On occasion, I will find a chicken over there, just checking things out. I collect the eggs in the coop and on my way out, I check the Buff in the brooding area but I can't see her...ANYWHERE. I could hear her, but couldn't see her. So I went in for a closer look. That's the brooding area in the picture above. With the exception of the butt-end of a chicken in the lower right hand corner (some hens will do anything to be a star), do you see any chickens in there? Neither do I.

So I started snooping and there, squished in between the top and bottom straw bales, I found her. I also found a mixed hen, too. The Buff was enthusiastically pecking her on the head trying to make her move. O.K., now this is getting odd. So I reach under the mix, who I believe to be Mocha to see if there was an egg. There was ten. Ten I knew nothing about because it never occurred to me that a hen, much less two, would wedge themselves between two straw bales to lay eggs. There's Mocha after I chased away the head poking Buff Orpington.

Now I have a nest of eggs in the most unlikely and unsuitable places and possibly two broody hens. GACK!!! Funny how this situation was never mentioned in any books or any conversations I ever had about chickens. "Oh, and by the way, Marn; (or Marnie, or Marian, or Dumb-Dumb)make sure you don't make any cool hidy-holes that would be totally impractical for brooding hens 'cause that's exactly where they'll pick for raising their chicks. Until, of course, the chicks hatch, fall off the bale and break their itty-bitty necks." Double GACK!!!

That's the cache of eggs I knew nothing about. There's twelve, not ten. On top of everything else, I can't count when surprised. Well, I have to do something but I have no idea what. So I'll start with the easiest and work my way up (or down, whatever). I definitely have to close off that broody area so no chicken can get in or out. That I solved by using an S hook to close the top part of the fence where the chickens were getting in. The thing is, I don't know about leaving the eggs on that bale, it seems precarious to say the least if those eggs hatch. I looks like I may have two broody hens. Of the two, Mocha is totally in broody mode. She's cranky, she's pecky and when I pick her up, she turns into a boneless pile of rags. The Buff is running around, eating and generally being a normal chicken. So I figure she was just hoping to add another egg to the clutch and let another hen have the fun of hatching them. So I put her back in the flock. There's no way that Mocha can set twelve eggs, it's a bit much. I have learned that eight eggs seem to be a good number for a hen Mocha's size. So I take seven of the eggs and put them in my pocket. The other five I put in a new nest area that I have packed with straw all around to make it cozy and secure and on the floor. I remove the top bale, opening up the area where Mocha is setting making it not so attractive to her. I transfer Mocha to the new nest area. She protests a bit but then she sees the eggs and goes in and settles. I take the seven eggs in and test them to see how fresh they are. If you put an egg in a bowl of water, a fresh one will sink, a 'rotten' one will float to the top and a so-so one will stand on end. So I decide to give her the so-so ones since chances are there's a chick developing in them. I had a whole escapade with weird broody hens last season and did the whole egg water thing, the eggs that stood on end or floated did hatch. The four fresh ones I kept to put in the incubator that will be started this Saturday (more on that in another post; one long, convoluted story at a time). I went back to the brooding area to give Mocha the eggs. Now I intended to take the other five and do the water test so she'd have eggs roughly the same age but I decided against it. She'd been through a lot of turmoil, being pecked on the head, being moved, have eggs taken then replaced, and I thought I had pushed it about as far as I could.

So Mocha now has eight eggs under her and hopefully she'll stay on the nest and in three weeks I'll see if anything hatches or if this was nothing more than an elaborate April Fool's Joke these two hens 'hatched' up. "Hey, I know," Says Mocha to Buffy, "Let's hide a bunch of eggs on her and then on April Fool's, we'll let her find them. That'll be a fine joke. And messing with her head is just a bonus."