She also lays huge brown eggs. Bigger than any jumbo I've ever seen. Bigger than some of the duck eggs I've had before. But they are pretty thin shelled, so they often break. Also she's older, like 6 or 7, so her eggs just get bigger and thinner.
She can't climb into a nest box that is not on the ground because she's so big. And as it's only a matter of time before she ruptures a large egg and ends up dying from peritonitis we plan on culling her soon.
But this isn't the betrayal.
Having chickens is a love-hate relationship. They are well behaved and fairly innocuous pets, but then they go and do things to betray that basic trust in their simplicity as creatures.
Chickens are terrible fliers. And they are not the smartest, so a wire see-through fence, really just 6 to 12 inches high is supposed to be enough to enclose them.
Oh but not my birds. We have a 5 foot wire fence. But some of them hop it to get to the garden on the other side. So I've raised it to over seven feet. Yeah the smaller birds, that will soon be getting a wing trim, still fly over it. What's up with that?
And we have over 30 birds that are mature enough to lay eggs. I get like 4-6 eggs a day.
Total bull.
Then on top of it all I thought I was past all this egg eating business.
We spent a ridiculous $200 on a roll away egg nest. They won't use it without bedding, which makes it non-egg rolling. They actually wouldn't use it until we replaced the plastic perches, which were far to slippery for my chickens, with wood perches.
Again, total bull.
These chickens fly up onto and over wire fencing which is like a millimeter of slippery metal, but they can't handle three inch wide plastic? But I digress.
So when Louisa is laying, she does a 3 -4 egg run once a week, I always make sure to hang around. Her eggs are thin and one little peck and they break, which then brings us back to egg eating.
Stupid birds.
Two days ago I once again missed my opportunity and the vultures got to it.
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