I know I already posted about getting the first egg from our hens and having to send Peep back to the farm because she turned out to be a he, but I forgot to post about when we put the nesting box in the hen house. I was reminded that I did not post about this when my Great Grandpa Clint told us his story about getting chicks a long time ago.

We went to visit him last week and we like to stay up and talk with him. He tells us some funny stories. We were talking about raising chickens and the ones that we saw at the Dude Ranch and he started telling us this story about when he was young. He was in the FFA, Future Farmers of America, when he was young and living in Iva, South Carolina. He ordered about 200 chicks, Leghorns, like our Betty Sue the white one, to raise and then sell the eggs, since they are not eating hens. He said he made a run for them that was huge, probably 40′ x 40′ and then he made a small enclosure for them to stay in. He said he built them some boxes to lay their eggs in. Then he said he never could get any eggs from them. They kept laying their eggs all over the place and probably eating them themselves or the other animals that got in to the run would get them but they never layed the eggs in the nesting boxes.

I told him about how there is a method to getting them to laying in the boxes. I told him how we did not put the nesting box in to the hen house until they were in the month we thought they would begin laying eggs, about when they are six months old. I told him how we put straw in the box and some fake eggs in there to give them the idea to lay their eggs there. I told him how if you put the nesting box in too early then they just lay in there to sleep at night and never want to lay their eggs there because they think it is their bed. I also told him that by putting the nesting box in the place that they sleep it tells them that this is where to lay your eggs.

He said he wished he knew that back then, he could have made some money on those eggs. He also said that the chickens ran all over the place if he let them out of the run and mostly never came back.