200 Eggs!

Barely a fortnight after their arrival at Hamby Home(in)stead, our chookies laid two extreme eggs.  They have since gone on to gift many 70-75 gram eggs but excelled themselves this week - on three counts. 

Yesterday marked the occasion of their 200th egg!  It was also the day we received their first-ever 80 gram effort (definitely a record for the girls) and then today, possibly worn-out from yesterday's exertions, Vaughan collected the smallest egg we'd ever seen. 

Today's mini-egg weighs somewhere between 15 and 20 grams, so is significantly smaller than their previous smallest which was just 30 grams!

The girls laid their 100th egg back at the beginning of May.  At that stage we were receiving around 14 eggs a week, which was slightly less than what we had been given soon after their arrival.  The weekly egg tallies dropped further, getting as low as 5 eggs only a few weeks back.  We've been expecting the girls to cease laying, particularly as there have been a couple of days when the nests were empty.  They surprised us last week though, giving us three eggs on three days and scoring 16 eggs in total for the week! 

"That's not very fox-proof!"

The wind was pretty wild last night at Hamby Home(in)stead.  I was woken at 1am by all the noise and we half-expected Erin to evacuate her caravan for the security of brick walls. 

She was very brave and toughed it out - or rather felt that the door might be ripped off it's hinges if she ventured outside!  The chookies had no choice but to sit tight, which was probably a good thing.


On inspection this morning there had been some damage to the undercover area near our front door, where the battened shade cloth (and batten) had ripped from the beams.  More surprisingly, part of the Fox-proof Fowl Fort had fallen! 

Erin muttered "that's not very fox-proof" when she saw the breach.  Quite true.  Although the girls didn't seem overly phased by their larger gateway - and were pleased of a free-range early-mark - it was clear we would need to repair the fence before night-fall.  After purchasing more cable ties, we took the opportunity to relocate the fort onto new pasture. 

(I use the expression "we" with much artistic license as it was really Nick who did all the hard work.  Vaughan assisted a little with some lifting and I helped thread cable ties through the panels)!