Old Habits Die Hard

Welsummer egg in a hidden snow nest

It's been quite a long time since I've written anything here....so much catching up to do!

Let me jump right into things, then play catch up later. My chickens began laying on August 20, first one egg and now we're up to well over a dozen eggs a day. The record so far is 20 eggs in one day from my 26 girls.

Harriet is one of my Welsummer girls, named after Harry Houdini because she constantly escapes from the chicken run. I discovered that, once Harriet started laying, she began laying in a hidden nest in a patch of beans that I'd been letting go to seed. She's laid an egg in there nearly every day since I discovered the nest a couple weeks ago. Her eggs are a nice dark brown, but not quite as dark as I'd expect from a Welsummer.

Harriet, my Welsummer hen named after Harry Houdini. She's a renegade chicken that marches to a different drummer.

Yesterday we got the first snow of the season, which is quite early for Pennsylvania. It's still snowing today. But, old habits die hard, and Harriet braved the snow and made her way to her "hidden" nest and promptly deposited a nice brown egg. I'd placed a golf ball in her nest to encourage her to return to the same spot rather than lay all over creation, which, of course, would mean I'd have to hunt and hunt and hunt to find eggs.

I'm not sure what goes on in a chicken's brain, but she prefers this spot out in the open to the nesting boxes I have set up in the chicken run. Silly girl.