The Egg Catcher
Back to the egg drama!
The hen above is laying an egg in the corner of the hen house. Have I whined to you all about how irksome this is? Well, let me do it now. The hen house is an A-frame building, which means the roof meets the ground. It meets the ground right there where that darned bird is laying her egg. Between me and that bird are two sets of roosts (horizontal boards for the birds to sit on) and diagonal cross beams for structural support. It is way too far to reach with my arm. Roy says he just gets a long stick to get the eggs, but when I tried that I just pushed the egg in circles!
For a while I was crawling all the way back there to get the eggs. That involved crouching down to duck under the 3-ft high roost, then scooting backwards to avoid the crossbeam, crawling underneath another roost and then almost crawling into the corner to grab the egg where the roof will not allow one to do more than squat! It is especially fun when there is fresh poop on the roosts that I get to stick my nose in as I wiggle around.
Anyhow, I got sick of that process, so I made myself an egg catcher. You heard me!
Here's Melise with my egg catcher. It's a wire hanger with a plastic bag stapled to the end. See the egg I caught? It worked like a charm!
Melise thought it was a chicken catcher.
It did catch the chickens' attention!
This is an egg scale. There are set standards that define the size label you see on eggs at the store. When chickens first start laying eggs they are very small.
As time passes, the eggs will get larger. This is an egg from one of our barred rock hens - she's an overachiever!
Now I have to go chase the one guinea that refused to go into the house with all the others. Looking out the window I can see it waiting at the door looking very sad. Hopefully she'll cooperate this time!
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