Spring is here - or is it?

At the end of January Mad Irene spotted some sunshine.   It only lasted about half an hour, but that was enough to convince her that Spring had arrived, so she laid an egg.   All the girls had given up producing eggs at the back end of October, so we were delighted that Irene had gone back into production.   We hoped that the rest of them would take the hint too.

We waited and waited, but although Irene was now in top gear and presenting us with lovely offerings every other day, nobody else showed any enthusiasm whatsoever.   Then, a fortnight later, Punk dramatically produced one as described in an earlier post.   But just the one.   She now seems to have settled into a routine of laying one egg every two weeks.  The other part of her egg laying routine is to drop them just outside the coop, preferably in a bit of mud if she can find some.

A couple of days ago I remembered that last year she laid her eggs in a nest box in the spare coop, so I went off to check if she was hiding some there.  Instead, I found three Titian eggs.  She has continued to keep them at half their previous size and with a very pointy end, but at least she's laying.

Earlier in the week, I was delighted to find that Tu-Tu had joined in the egg laying bonanza.  She has always been totally reliable, laying an egg every other day from the day she arrived, except in Winter.  Now I'm beginning to wonder if she's taken a leaf out of Punk's book and intends to lay only on alternate weeks, because there's been no follow up.   We shall see.

There's no sign of Maggie even considering getting into the nestbox for any purpose other than sleeping.  I am, however, surprised that Rebecca hasn't laid yet.  Normally when Irene does something, Rebecca is hot on her heels and copies her.   Seems she's drawn the line at egg production though.  The one hen who doesn't surprise me is Pom-Pom.  She hates the whole egg laying thing and tries to avoid doing it as much as possible.   She managed to reduce her performance by half last year, and she's no doubt hoping like mad that she's gone into early henopause this year.

And then there's Fizz.   The day Irene spotted the sunshine, Fizz spotted Rebecca and chased her round the run.   He's done a bit of chasing and dancing, but not nearly as much as in past years.   Last week when they were all out in the garden munching on the lawn, Tu-Tu actually invited Fizz over by squatting before he'd even made an improper suggestion.   He gratefully accepted the invitation.   So it came as something of a surprise to him when she gave him a sharp peck post-coitus!

It's not too long before we mess around with our clocks and end up with an extra hour of daylight.  Hopefully, that will remind all the girls that their job is to produce our breakfasts.