The Offending Culprit
The 16 Eggs She Was sat On
All Taken Away Here at Smallholding tips things never seem to go quite as you plan there is always something happening to put a severe dent in your time management.
You may recall we had a visit from the fox who halved our Geese population overnight, well the other day I noticed that I hadnt seen one of our chickens for a while, I thought perhaps the fox had got her as well as the geese, but yesterday when I went down to let them out in the morning who should come strutting round the corner but our little AWOL bantam hen, she redily tucked into some of the corn I had just scattered then went into the coop and started tucking into the layers pellets, I quickly ran up to the house and got Sharon who I might add was only in her night dress, I told her what had happened so she slipped on her tracksuit bottoms and a jacket and joined me at the coop the bantam by this time was gone so a detailed search of the surrounding area was started.
After about half an hour Sharon shouted "I think shes in here" Iwent over to the compost area, climbed up onto one of the heaps and as I pushed the long grass apart with a stick there she was sat inbetween the compost heaps and the pig run.
The grass and stinging nettles here are about 3 feet high and there she sat right in the middle as good as gold, I proded her with the stick and she got up to reveal 16 eggs that she had been sat on so she had obviously been missing a bit longer than I thought. I managed to catch her and take the eggs away to discourage her from going back, anyhow as I wright she has not done so but has returned to the flock. I have told her any such repititons and she will be spending some time in the naughty cage.
The upshot of all this is that I was now running about an hour late for my day job (good job Im self Employed) but this seems to be the norm when running a Smallholding you never know what is going to happen next.
2 comments:
So what did you do with the eggs then Mark?
Hi
Thats a good question, because we didnt know exactly how long they had been there we decided not to eat them ourselves, but we knew someone who would eat them.
Actually Sharon took them upto the house and made scrambled egg with them checking as she went to make sure none of them were rotten then it was taken to the large people as we call them (our 2 saddleback weaners) who made very short work of them indeed.
I think a true Smallholder dosnt like to waste anything.
Hope you enjoyed the post.
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