... but sometimes they just gravitate towards those corners all on their own, and now you have to come up with a way of communicating to them that corners aren't necessarily the best place for them - not the easiest when it's someone of the same species, but try telling a chicken!
Why is this a problem? Well, we recently welcomed a new flock of sixteen-week old pullets to the farm. This is something we do every few months but, as with any group of teens, no two flocks behave exactly the same. And in the summer, particularly a summer like we're enjoying this year, you have to really be on your toes.
For the first few weeks they're here, they don't lay any eggs as they're still too young. They don't even really go outside that much at first, although we still open up the pop-holes at sunrise every day, so they can venture out if they want to. Outside of summer we have a certain amount of control over how quickly they 'come in to lay'.
Chickens naturally lay most of their eggs first thing in the morning. During winter months, because we can control the lights in the sheds, we can incrementally step-up the light in the mornings so new birds start laying nice and gradually over a 3-week period or so - you'll get a few eggs, then a few more and a few more... But in the summer, with so much daylight, they can 'come in to lay' without warning.
For laying, chickens like nice cosy, cubbyhole type places, which is why they don't need to be trained to use the nest boxes - they naturally gravitate towards them (you can see how this is all supposed to work right here). But if they 'come in to lay' suddenly, and haven't had a chance to discover the nest boxes yet, they'll lay them pretty much anywhere. And corners present a very attractive alternative... and that's a problem!..
...Because once one goes there, then another will go there and pretty soon that's just where they lay now. So you get eggs laid on top of eggs laid on top of eggs which, apart from being inconvenient to say the least, is not conducive to keeping them whole. And this new flock of birds seem to really like corners, so it's time to McGyver something...
As you'll probably realise if you keep up with 'What's Going On' here at the farm, to get our eggs to you requires a number of different, not always obvious, skillsets. Today, it's carpentry and metalwork...
The plan is to craft a number of angled plinths that essentially turn all the corners into slopes. Then, to further drive home the message that corners aren't for nesting, we'll fix some tubular steel in front of each board so they have somewhere to perch instead. We'll measure up - fit & finish is important as we can't risk creating somewhere for them to get trapped - cut everything to size in one of our workshops, then load up the buggy and drive it the mile or so to the chicken shed for assembly.
As you'd imagine, the sheds aren't the best spaces for this kind of work either - they're designed to suit chicken's, not us. Apart from the nest boxes that run through the centre of the each shed, the feeders and drinking lines run down each side. And then of course there are the chickens...
With young birds like these, they can be a little 'nervy', so it's important to move slowly so they don't get too alarmed. They're incredibly inquisitive creatures though, and it's not long before they're sticking their beaks in and keeping an eye on things.
It's taken a couple of days in all but, so far, it seems to be working as intended. They're still heading for the corners, but now they're making do with perching instead of nesting. Crisis averted, and onto the next job...
