Pom-Pom laid an egg on my foot this afternoon. She’s a crested Poland bantam who has never come to terms with the fact that hens lay eggs, let alone that they should be laid in a nest box in the chicken coop.
As a result, her eggs have been found scattered in various parts of the hen run. We’ve found them by one of the water dishes, in the farthest corner of the cage beneath the coop, on a step, on a concrete ledge and in the very narrow space between the coop and the fence (heaven knows how she squeezed in there). We’ve even seen her laying them while she was still on the move.
All the other hens instinctively knew that when an egg was getting ready to make an appearance, they should go into the coop and relax quietly in the nest box until it popped out. Not Pom-Pom. She marches restlessly round and round and round, not even stopping for a snack or a drink. Offer her a tasty piece of boiled potato, which normally she’d kill for, and it’s ignored.
Most days we let our little flock out to devastate the garden for a while, but only when we can sit with them. When we did this today, we could tell from Pom-Pom’s behaviour that an egg was on the way. The surprise came when she rushed over to me, stood on my foot, dumped her egg and headed off the to the food dish.
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