Stashed Eggs

"I want eggs, girls!" I say several times each day.  I've begun to wonder if I have bad chickens.  You know, got a bad bunch of chickens.  They look like hens but maybe they're all roosters.  Some of them have very small combs and maybe they're too young to be able to tell yet.  Maybe there's something like that wrong with them.

So far, there was the one egg in the cage when they arrived.  It was cracked but only on the outside.  Gently I carried it to the house.  We ate it for dinner, sharing it.

Then there were two more eggs.  Each was found on the same stack of two bales of hay.  To help them out I put a hen box in that same spot, but there were no more eggs there in that spot, not in the box or somewhere else on that small stack of two bales of hay.  We ate those two eggs one day for lunch with a mess of eggs and bacon and tomato, and we each got our own entire homemade egg.

I'd looked before but now I looked more closely.  Each day I use a little LED flashlight I carry in my pocket and I look in corners and under things, for eggs.  I know it's a new place, they're young, it's been cold and the days are getting longer but maybe not long enough to tell a chicken to lay eggs.

A few days ago I'd been all over the top of the hay pile; it's four bales high.  I stood on my tippy toes each day to see if any eggs had been laid on those higher bales.  I'd seen a chicken fly and flutter up to the top.  I've started to pet the chickens each day and more and more of them like it.  Tonight I looked closer and there at the top, in a spot where the bale had been moved were FOUR eggs.  WOW!  Someone is laying eggs here!

I carefully gathered them up.  I had cut a styrofoam egg carton in half.  This material can be washed and it is sturdy material for carrying the eggs to the kitchen from the barn.  Hubby suggested we have eggs and bacon for breakfast tomorrow!