Rollaway

What evil lurks within?

Who thinks that my chickens eggs are delicious? I do! So when their egg production began to drop off precipitously a couple of months ago, I was confused. Because of the hot summer they had done a bit of an impromptu stress-molt, but that would only slow down production by a bit. I was only getting one egg a day at the most.

I became more diligent about checking for eggs several times a day, and noticed some sticky bits. Then some eggshells. You know who thinks that the eggs are delicious? The chickens do. Someone must have accidentally smushed one of their eggs after laying it and taken a nibble to see what it was like. And then they became unstoppable.

This happens with some regularity in chicken husbandry. Most of the time the solution is to have the offending egg-eater for dinner. Since I am not planning on eating these girls, I did some research and discovered the rollaway nestbox. The floor is on a bit of a slant, so when the chicken stands up after laying their egg, it rolls out of sight before they get to take a bite.




I cobbled mine together from the existing nestbox, some scrap lumber, and a bit of astroturf I had from some ancient project that I don't remember anymore. Now the next step is to get the girls to actually want to lay in the nest. Fingers crossed! I will celebrate with an angel food cake.

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Pieces from Italy

I never got around to writing an epic tale of our travels, so I will go in snippets. When we were on the isle of Capri (pronounced "CAP-ree" as I learned), I noticed people drinking out of public fountains. Some were big ones in the middle of the square, but more often there would be an alley with a little urn or a fish or another figurine spouting water into a broad basin. After watching locals drink by leaning over and delicately sipping straight from the stream, never getting their hands wet, I followed suit.

It was a strange freedom, coming from a country where you daren't drink water unless you know exactly where it's come from. I've gone on backpacking trips armed with filters and pills and all sorts of purifiers and lived with a low-level grade of fear of the cooties. Cooties of the most gastrointestinally dreadful sort, if you know what I mean.

In Italy, on Capri, I was thirsty and I drank.