Henpecked

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Recently, our hens developed a nasty habit: pecking open their own eggs.  It's bad enough that Isabella is on permanent strike, and refuses to lay at all.  When the hens started destroying eggs, it seemed like they were taunting us.  "Go ahead," they were saying, "build a crazy over-the-top hen-house, feed us all sorts of gourmet chow. We'll reward you with no eggs at all."

I glared at the hens, and reminded them how fortunate they were that Robb and I were vegetarians.  "Another flock might not be so lucky, and might have an appointment with the chopping block," I told them.

Robb took a less dire and more productive approach to all this.  He followed some advice I'd gotten from an online knitting group (of course) and hung dark curtains around the nest-box.  The thinking was that the hens would not peck what they could not see.  Hens, after all, are pretty deficient in the brains department. 

Remarkably, this worked right away.  Something about sitting inside a curtain of fringed t-shirts must be particularly soothing to knuckledheaded chickens.

Even Isabella laid an egg this week.

Comments

Stefaneener said…
I love that feeling: "I've outwitted something with the brains of shoe leather!!"

Good luck (and I use The Rav for every question I have, too).
Erin said…
OMG that is a hilarious post!! Thank you.
Harold said…
We keep a few marble eggs in each nesting box. When they go back to peck their eggs, most of time they peck a marble one, say "that hurts", and stop the egg pecking.
Lynn said…
Tried as i might- with lots of helpful advice- I never got my chicks to use a nesting box. At least they are laying in a corner of the coop and not from the rafters anymore. When that was going on they all developed a taste for the eggs that smashed on the floor.Now I just try to retrieve their eggs asap. Most days i feel a little smarter than them.
Anonymous said…
love it!

the pink dragon
Lisa said…
Do you recall where you got the stone eggs?
Lisa said…
What a puzzle. Silly hens...

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