A New Laying Box

(Service is especially poor today, so I’m struggling to get this post uploaded.)

Friday was a successful day.

First off, I tested the flavored yogurt, and it was perfect. The texture was ideal, and I loved the flavor. I went around to everyone while we cleaned up the breakfast dishes and gave them each a taste. They were begging for more, which is always a good sign.

Steph said it was the best yogurt she’d ever had, deflating my excitement. Now I know I’ll never have as great yogurt as this. Oh, well. At least I have a benchmark to aim for.

I spent the morning working on building a better laying box. I had done some research to figure out what homesteaders found that their chickens liked, and I came up with a design that pulled in some of their ideas with the resources I had.

It took a few hours to throw together, but I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. The chickens have all been staying in the pen since our great reinforcement, so I’m going to induce them to lay again.

I nailed the thing to the wall so they can’t knock it over. There were a few eggs laid out in the henyard. I grabbed those and put them in a box. This morning we had a few eggs in the boxes! Even one of the ducks climbed in one of the lower ones. I wasn’t sure if they would because the sides are eight inches high.

Hopefully, this was the encouragement they needed. We’d seen a hen eating an egg out in the grass, which I think means they’re low on calcium. But there’s nothing I can do about that just now.

Our one sadness of the day was that Mecha lay on the runt and smothered it. It was a female, so that leaves us only two females out of the remaining seven puppies.