We had noticed that we weren’t getting as many eggs from Eleanor, and we thought it was awfully odd that we got no eggs at all yesterday, but we didn’t think much of it until Scott found an egg in the compost pile today. What was it doing there? Then he noticed that Eleanor was going off by herself and was hard to find. That’s unusual, because usually when they’re free-ranging in the backyard, they stick together.
So after a little investigation, we found this nest behind a tall clump of tansy. It looks like Eleanor, Abigail, and Bess have all taken to laying an egg in this spot when it suits them. So the girls were rounded up and herded back into the coop, where they will be spending a little more time over the next few days while they get re-acquainted with the concept of laying an egg in an egg box. They are, after all, farm animals. When they go off and start acting like wild birds, building nests wherever they please, it’s up to us farmers to get them back in line.