The hens we bought in October have started laying. The first ones to start laying at the farm were the leghorns, which started laying about 2 weeks ago. Our leghorns are our only chicken variety that lays white eggs, so it was easy to tell who was laying. We kept a leghorn at the house in our pet flock (her name is Blanco), but there haven’t been any white eggs in the nesting boxes. All of our other pet birds from the October hens have started laying, so we have been searching the yard looking to see if she was laying somewhere outside of the nesting boxes. Our yard isn’t that big, so it is an easy search… unless she is hiding her eggs.
Yesterday I was out wandering in the yard, and saw Blanco sitting in the back of one of my large potted bamboos. All of the hens dig in the bamboos, and do their dust baths in the larger pots, so I didn’t think anything of it. 10 minutes later she was messing around with the bamboo leaves that had fallen in the pot, and then she jumped out, and started doing the egg bragging clucks… when chickens lay their eggs they typically leave the nest and walk around bragging very loudly about their accomplishment. When I saw her strutting around doing her clucks I put 2 and 2 together and went to look in the pot.
I didn’t see anything at first glance, but upon further inspection I found what we had been searching for.
She had dug a nest, lined it with bamboo leaves, had been laying her eggs in the nest, and then covering them up with more bamboo leaves.
Closer view:
We robbed her nest of the eggs, but left the nest intact. It will be interesting to see if she continues to lay in the pot, or if she starts laying in the nesting box.
