Easter in January

CLUCK, CLUCK, CLUCK!

Or should I say, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!! No...it's not grandchickies...big disappointment there. However, a discovery was made yesterday in the hay mow of our barn.

Dan found 10 eggs, pictured above, nestled in a bed of straw while running some extension cords. When he found them he said the eggs were cold, which I guess it a good thing, but since we don't know how old they are we decided not to collect them for eating purposes. We figure they've been there awhile maybe. (Instead, I now have 10 targets to shoot at with my .410...I blew 3 of them apart this morning!)
Afterwards I was cleaning stalls out and heard some scratching from above. I also saw a lot of straw in Charlie's water bucket, which is odd since he's not that messy with his hay. A black chickie was above me in the mow in little hen heaven. She must have been the one I saw flying the coop yesterday and walking the bridge of tobacco poles to get to the mow on the other side. It's funny when she's up there because straw will just fall from above. That must have been where the debris came from in Charlie's water bucket. Each stall has that old fashioned hole above it where in the old days you could just drop whatever from the mow into the animal pens below.

Last night we kept the eggs there until after dark to see if this was in fact M.I.A.'s brooding nest. I was disappointed to see that the eggs were abandoned. Hopefully I didn't just kill my grandchicks by taking away this hen's stash, but it is a little upsetting when you see 10 perfectly good eggs you're scared to eat and therefore are wasted. Oh well. It will be interesting to see if any eggs are there tonight. Yet another place we need to check daily.

I was also impressed that nothing had eaten these eggs. If you figure she laid an egg an day, that's 10 days nothing has gotten to these eggs. The mow is littered with raccoon poo (OOPS!) and I've seen raccoons in the barn before. Last night the eggs spent the night on the hay bale, which is right inside the barn and the loot was up for grabs. Not a single egg was touched.

Here's to nightly climbs in the mow unless we upset this hen enough she finds another hiding place. That is usually the case when we've stolen their stash in the past.

                                                        ....cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck......