Secret Stash!

[di]

As you know,Dazzle laid her very first egg just over a week or so ago.Well,it seemed to be a bit of a one off.
Since then,every morning,instead of making a dash for the food when we let them out,she goes straight to the same bit of fence & desperately tries to fly out.I wondered if it was that she needed to lay an egg,so Andi had a little wander around the plot with a torch to see if he could find anything...he couldn't.
Yesterday I got up there a little earlier to let them out so I could spy on her.She managed to get out and promptly made her way to the well rotted compost heap!
Once she'd done she casually made her way back into the run & I discovered six eggs!
What the Heck is that all about???They've got a perfectly cosy...and clean!...nest in the coop,Dandelion is laying everyday,so daily she gets to see the egg,yet she prefers to be escaping to a mucky ole compost heap!
Could it be that Dandelion has had a go at her for laying in "her" nest?
(the good thing to come from it is that we had two eggs in the coop earlier in the week...I thought they were both a little large to be hers,which means that Marigold has started to lay again.she's been better since Dandelion returned to the coop but had still not laid any since she was poorly way back in the Summer & I was worrying about her still)

[minskey]

Hi andi&di,

I had the same thing last summer with a banty 'dotte hen, she kept on dissapearing all day, I was really worried as I though she had been run over or eaten but when I checked the hen house at night she was there. This was over three days, my partner and I just could not find how she was getting out or where she was untill the 4th day when she didn't return to the hen house. We went out with a torch as it was dark and quite by chance shone on her eyes; she was in the long grass of next doors paddock, when we picke her up she was livid, she was sitting on a clutch of nine eggs!

[di]

She's not actually sitting on them as in broody.Just popping over the fence,laying her egg in the damp & dingy heap before returning to the run as if nothing's happened.She doesn't even announce what she's done.

[Suechooks]

The compost is probably quite warm if its active- may still be doing some rotting! Since I put a couple of full bales of straw in the corner of the run my old girls are squashing into a 3" gap to lay and leaving the indoor nest boxes unused! There's no accounting for taste!

[RichmondHens]

I have trouble with some of my banties trying to do this. Having always had them free range I got sick and tired of them laying away this summer and getting a whole host of chicks I hadn't bargained for, and penned them all up. Despite this, one determined one still got out somehow and laid 10 eggs away, 8 of which hatched.

It's difficult to say why your Dazzle is doing this. She may not feel secure in the nestbox because of other hens bullying her, or may just want to choose her own spot. What breed is she? Most of my Light Sussex bantams are "wanderers" whereas my other breeds happily go in the nestbox day after day.

I would leave one marked egg in the nest though, as if you take them all away she will most likely choose another place you don't know about!

[di]

She's a Norfolk grey.I can't imagine she's preparing to go broody...she's only just started laying?
I think she's maybe been intimidated by Dandelion & Marigold.I'm tempted to move them back in with the ISA's...now that there's two of them again they may be able to stand up for themselves a bit more than just Marigold on her own.She's gone from being the poor little picked on to being Queen Bully with her sis Dandelion!
It will also,hopefully,make it easier to introducethe late Summer teens to the early Spring young ones.(or is that just wishful thinking?)