Egg Sting!

Ha! I caught her red-winged! ;-)

I'd been kind of wondering about Punky the Golden Laced Polish Crested hen. It seemed that all the other hens (except for Fallujah...hmm...) have been laying eggs. But I hadn't seen any of Punky's. And she's just skittish enough that I thought she'd be a prime candidate for hiding her eggs. I've had experience with this....(I almost wrote "eggsperience" but thought that'd be too tacky)...my chickens when we lived in rural California had the run of the place and could roam as far as they wanted. I'd find eggs in pretty far-flung places, and I'm pretty sure there are some we never found. But here, we're in a residential area. They mostly stay in the backyard. I'd looked all over the back, and didn't ever find anything. There's not a whole lot of places she could hide them.

But I did notice that sometimes she'd disappear and then come back.

When we got home from Mexico, our very observant neighbor who watched them for us said, "She's a fence-hopper! She likes to go over your back fence and hang out in the blackberry bushes!" Hmm...a clue. So, I started watching. I sure didn't want to hop the fence myself and wade through the prickly blackberries. That would hurt! But I just watched. Today when Punky went missing, I had the time and the inclination, so I just staked out the back fence. Just sat there, waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I heard birds singing and felt the nice warm sun. I saw a neighbor cat literally climb the chain-link fence and climb down again. Wow! And at just that moment, Punky hopped right through the little gap between the fence and our neighbor's garage.

So, I went and looked in that area, over the fence....and I'm not sure how I missed them before, because it was pretty close. I just had to stick my head over the fence and look to my right. And right there, by the wall, was a nest of white eggs.

I called for Zac and put my tall rubber boots on him. I put him over the fence and he gathered the eggs carefully. I put the eggs--18 of them!--into the nesting box. Then Zac caught Punky and we put her in there to show her that, hey Punky, *here* is where we lay eggs around here! I put a black X with a pen on each so I know which are the old eggs that have been out for who knows how long. I'll leave them there a couple of days and then compost them. Hopefully Punky'll get the idea!

Thank you for your help, Zachary! You're a good kid.

I'm glad we figured it out now, because hens will sometimes go broody when they get a big enough clutch of eggs. Then they want to sit on them. And I'm not sure I would have found her if she'd done that and I hadn't noticed until it was dark. And she could sit and sit and never hatch any of those infertile eggs.