Soft Shelled Eggs

I had a few soft shelled eggs when the girls first started laying but I thought that was the end of it. Today when I managed to drag myself out of bed my girlfriend told me that there was an egg in the run. I managed to get it out of the run without letting the birds escape but it was already cracked. Then when I got home from work today there was only 1 egg in the nest box and that was cracked too! Today wasn’t a good day for eggs!

I have no idea why this egg was laid here...

This egg was laid in the right place but had a thin shell and was cracked

I am wondering if they have a calcium deficiency – I put some grit with oyster shell down in the run so hopefully that will do the trick. I’m not convinced though as they have had access to grit since I first got them.

Yesterday I got an odd egg in the nest area. It was rough and had lots of red/brown speckles on it – I though it might be Daisy’s first egg.

Is this Daisy's first egg?

This morning when I let the chickens out there was already a cracked egg in the run (I wrote about it in my previous post) so when I came back at lunch time to see this I was pleasantly surprised:

Eggs in the nest area

It looks like the nest is working and the egg on the right it the biggest one I have had so far!

The Bad News

After I cleaned out the chickens today, I was doing a bit of gardening when I heard a flapping of wings. I looked round and Victoria had managed to fly over the netting that I put up yesterday. I chased her around the garden for a bit until I finally managed to catch her and put her back over the other side. As I was putting her over, I leaned on the netting and the string snapped! Well that lasted a long time!

I blame Victoria!

I took down the netting and decided to think out a way to improve it. I decided that the next attempt would need a stronger chord, and would need to be higher off of the ground, so I got out my drill and some bits of wood and this is what I came up with:

Version 2 of my net fence

This is much better than what I did last time – the rope is a lot stronger and the fence is a bit higher. It looks like the rope is not tight enough but this is as tight as I can get it. The reason that it sags is that the netting is pegged tightly into the ground and is pulling down on the rope. If I tightened it any more I think the wood would snap!

The other advantage to the new setup is that it is easier for me to get in and out. Where the netting attaches onto the coop, I have purposefully left the bottom quite loose – instead of being pegged into the ground it is attached to the coop about 1 foot off of the ground. This means that when I move the flower pots off of the bottom of the net I can just about squeeze under it without having to lay face down in chicken poop.

I got another broken egg today off of the floor of the coop – the grey one is still laying there. I decided to put a bit more bedding down on the coop floor to see if that can cushion the impact a little bit. It seems like such a waste to be throwing her eggs away…

I have also been asking for name suggestions for the brown on on the forums at Down the Lane. I am going to try and keep the thread going for a couple of days and then pick one of the suggestions.