More Eggs and the Escapee is Caught!

The Prodigal Chicken returns!

I know this was supposed to be a tour of our WORM Condo... 

Okay, one item at a time- Egg News

We went and picked up our hens 14 days ago and though we were told they were in molt and the stress of the move, and, and ... we expected to wait much longer before the first egg. Well, it came on day 11 and we've had at least one a day since. I say that because today was our first multi egg day! We got two. They are slightly different color egg shells so we know at least two hens are laying. 

We are also hearing a lot more of the egg clucking noises from the coop! It really is eggciting. The photo shows our egg on the left and the commercial egg on the right.

When cooking them up, ours again on the left and commercial store bought on the right. Just as all the Tree hugging naturalist, organic spewing believers say, it is both fresher looking and way better tasting. The store bought one tastes like the eggs I grew up on, but the home grown egg tastes a touch "eggier". It is also has a brighter color on the yolk. 

Okay, item #2. Our escapee has been recovered. I gave up on getting this one back some time ago, but JoAnn has been saying she's been seeing it pretty often lately. So to humor her I set to making a guillotine trap today to try to get the phantom chicken. I took the old travel pen I made to pick up the chickens and cut the original door off. I then made some slide rails for the flat plywood 'guillotine' door. I then made a trigger plate whose fulcrum was off center so when the plate was stepped on, the high end moving down would pull the trigger out from under the trap door and gravity would close the trap keeping the chicken inside. Well, I built it, tested it and set it all in about 2 hours, we had lunch and I thought it might take a week or so to finally catch the hen if it ever came around again. 

It took 15 minutes.

That knocked my socks off. We barely finished with lunch when we heard a bang and the chickens were clucking like crazy. We headed out to the coop and the photos show what we had! The thing worked first time! We then quickly moved the entire trap into the pen and made sure the exit door was securely closed this time and opened the slide door. She ran out and tried the corners of the pen, but we were ready this time. I figure it will take a few days for her to settle in, but who knows!?! I just know JoAnn is relieved to have them all back together again. 

Next Post will be the Worm Condo Tour, I promise.