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Author Topic: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??  (Read 6055 times)

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #15 on: February 16, 2016, 03:02:31 am »
It's not just foxes which get them, but stoats, weasels, gulls, crows, jackdaws and rooks, birds of prey, cats - they're all out for a tasty snack.

And hedgehogs.   :rant:  And after all my kindnesses to them, too.  :huff:



Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #16 on: February 16, 2016, 03:04:25 am »
Our hens are totally free range.  Or, as I call them, freeloading.  ::)

Luckily we have a neighbour with hens in a lovely large run, who loves her hens but doesn't eat eggs ;)

It's definitely important that the hens don't see you raid the nest - once they know you've discovered it, they'll stop laying in it.
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #17 on: February 16, 2016, 03:07:38 am »
As long as they haven't started sitting the eggs will have stayed cool.  To check, try putting them in a bowl of water - fresh eggs should sit on the bottom, and definitely not float.

I've always been frightened to do this, as I understand that the shell is porous and you can end up forcing germs from the outside through to the inside.  Do you use warm water, Fleecewife, so that this doesn't happen? 

So my tactic is to break eggs of unknown age into a saucer; you can soon see if there's a problem.  But occasionally you get one that's so old you can smell that there's a problem  :yuck: :surrender:
Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

NormandyMary

  • Joined Apr 2011
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #18 on: March 10, 2016, 04:39:27 pm »
I found 18 in the goat house, then 12 in hubbys workshop (where we keep the hay) the other day. I wondered why they had stopped laying in their house, now I know!!!

macgro7

  • Joined Feb 2016
  • Leicester
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #19 on: March 16, 2016, 10:03:42 pm »
Keep your hens locked in the coop (is it with a run) for a day or two or maybe even three and they will get used to laying inside again.
Last year I was walking in a forest behind my house and found three chicken eggs behind next to a large tree.
Now one hen started laying in the duck house nest box.
My chickens and ducks are so used to their routine that they always go to sleep to their own house.
Growing loads of fruits and vegetables! Raising dairy goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits on 1/2 acre in the middle of the city of Leicester, using permaculture methods.

Vinnie

  • Joined Mar 2016
Re: Free range hens but how to control where they lay??
« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2016, 02:14:12 pm »
If you can't find to buy the rubber eggs, right now since Easter is close ,in the stores they sell hollow plastic eggs. We have put those in the nests and sometimes it fools them into thinking it must be a good spot. Although they must be color blind because some are pink and blue  ;D

 

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