How long can you walk around with your legs crossed?

It seemed like just another Saturday…but it didn’t end that way. After lunch, we returned to our nesting box project. Since we had used our old 8’ x 10’ shed for a hen house, we needed to add nesting boxes to the sides. Instead of taking up valuable inside square footage so desperately needed by all 29 chickens, we added the nesting boxes to the sides on the outside. We cut a 1’ x 8’ hole in the side, about in the center of each of the 10’ walls. Then the nesting boxes were “stick” built in place to provide 8 nesting boxes per side.

Today, we added the dividers needed to create the 1’ x 1’ nesting boxes. As we worked, one hen in particular seemed to be inspecting our work. She was walking all around us as we installed the dividers; under our legs while we knelt down, jumping up into the unfinished boxes, and walking in one door and around the hen house only to come in the other door. Was she just looking for attention? She was a pest…or so it seemed at the time.

Once we completed the boxes, we added some fresh straw to the bottom upon which eggs could be laid at some point in the future. We had no sooner finished when this pesky hen (who was given the name “Inspector Hen’eral” by our 10 year old), flew up into one of the newly completed boxes. She began to arrange and organize the straw into a nest like shape before settling in.…to rest, we thought.

Upon our return home after a fun night out with our friends, the chickens needed to be put to bed. I “tucked” them in by checking their water and closing the doors to the hen house. Remembering the Inspector Hen’eral’s behaviors, I decided to check the nesting box that she so neatly prepared earlier in the evening. There, sitting right in the middle of the organized nest of straw, after almost 18 weeks, was our first egg! About half the size of a large egg, it was perfectly shaped (egg shaped of course) and smooth, with a very solid dense feel to it.

We had been working on the nesting boxes over the course of the last 3 weeks. Within minutes of completing them, a hen settles in to lay our first egg. You have to ask yourself one question,”How long has she been walking around with her legs crossed?”