{"id":27167,"date":"2018-12-11T17:15:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T17:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=27167"},"modified":"2018-12-11T17:15:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T17:15:17","slug":"smoke-has-started-laying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=27167","title":{"rendered":"Smoke has started laying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago Ebony had been in and out of the chicken shed getting ready to lay her egg when suddenly she started shouting really loudly which she hasn’t been doing lately. I checked and she was stood at the pop hole shouting her head off.<\/p>\n

I wafted Ebony into the shed not being sure why she wasn’t going in and was surprised to then see Smoke come running out. Ebony obviously didn’t appreciate having Smoke in there for company when she wanted to lay her egg.<\/p>\n

A little later Ebony had laid her egg in her favourite corner of the chicken shed and I didn’t think any more of it.<\/p>\n

The next day, which was yesterday, I checked the nest boxes as I do every day and was surprised to find a tiny egg in the nest box next to the store cabinet. My initial thought was that it must be Dandelion’s egg as it was the size and shape of her eggs but it had tiny white speckles on it.<\/p>\n

Dandelion had stopped laying at the end of October the same as the year before and last year didn’t start again until April. Coupled with the fact that she is moulting it seemed a bit unlikely that she would start laying again. I wasn’t expecting the amigos and the silky girls to lay until spring though and hadn’t seen any of them go to the nest box.<\/p>\n

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The mystery egg on the left and Ebony’s eggs on the right<\/p><\/div>\n

Today I went up and again checked the nest boxes and was surprised to find Smoke in the nest box next to the cabinet. I went to get my camera.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0 soon as I lifted the nest box lid Smoke ran out and over the top of the nest boxes.<\/p>\n

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Smoke running from the nest box<\/p><\/div>\n

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Smoke<\/p><\/div>\n

I returned a bit later and this time she was in the middle nest box but again she ran as I tried to get a photograph of her.<\/p>\n

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Smoke leaving the nest box at speed<\/p><\/div>\n

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Leaving her warm egg behind<\/p><\/div>\n

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Smoke’s second egg on the far left followed by her first egg and then Ebony’s eggs on the right<\/p><\/div>\n

So I now have proof that it is Smoke laying and her second egg is bigger than her first which is often the case. The second egg also had little white speckles on it. What a clever girl and she laid in the right place too! This was really unexpected as there has been no squatting from the girls but Smoke did go to the grit and oyster shell a little later.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t expected them to start laying at this time of year as last year the little girls had all stopped laying by December. I wonder if any of the other girls will start laying. It will be interesting to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago Ebony had been in and out of the chicken shed getting ready to lay her egg when suddenly she started shouting really loudly which she hasn’t been doing lately. I checked and she was stood at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27167"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27206,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27167\/revisions\/27206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}