grumpy

 We are on our third set of chickens (do chickens come in sets?) The first all came from the chicken stork...I mean store. The second set were hatched in our coop by a broody hen.

Once those babies grew we mixed the two groups together. Then over time I pulled one and then another chicken out when they were so picked on that they they wouldn't leave the coop for food and water. I closed the sliding door that allows the coop to become two separate chicken runs...thus creating the "under chickens".

Grumpy was one of those picked on chickens....I never expected her to hang with us when she became half-plucked with a large growth on her breast....but she has. After initial hatching losses we have only lost 3 birds over the 4+ years of chickening (4 if you count the mean rooster that we did away with intentionally). Our aging birds were giving very little output for all the grain we were inputting....enter the third batch of birds.

After two unsuccessful tries at using an incubator I had a hen volunteer for egg-sitting duty. Unfortunately after all her work we only had one chick (named Chicklet and who later grew into a beautiful rooster). We bought 7 move chicks to keep little Chicklet company.

Once set three started to lay I swapped the two under-chickens and the young birds who shared their under-coop with the big birds (and old rooster) in the larger chicken yard. Now the new layers had a larger yard and access to the inside of the coop and the nesting boxes.

I began watching the new under chickens who are really the old chickens to find who was still laying (we have had very few eggs for 6 months or more). As I discovered a chicken laying I moved her in with the layers-thus prolonging her lifespan.

I know I've seen Grumpy (who earned her name when she was being hen pecked and wouldn't leave the nesting boxes and unlike the other chickens who just fussed when I checked under them for eggs Grumpy would peck at me) sitting in the nesting boxes many times but I really didn't think she was still laying.

The other day I was looking specifically for grumpy.  I usually let the under-chickens wander the dog pen during the day and they have been hunting out their own nesting areas. At one point they found this inventive nest tucked behind the swamp cooler and beside the workbench. For whatever reason Jay didn't think that was a good nest so he blocked it off with a bucket at the front and an old piece of flooring blocking the back. The underchickens had started laying under the swamp cooler which required a hoe to pull the egg out but was working ok. I thought I was down to just one Americana laying from the old chickens.

So the other day I'm looking for Grumpy and I hear this scratching noise behind the swamp cooler. I realize she is squeezing between the flooring and the garage wall to get to the coiled tubing nest. When I moved the bucket  blocking the tube-nest from my sight I found not one or two but twelve eggs that Grumpy, or maybe I should call her Sneaky, had be faithfully laying day after day. Needless to say Grumpy, er Sneaky, is moving in with the layers.