Nature may misfire, but roosters never lose hope.

The Buckeye hens I've had the longest tend to go "broody" quite often - this means they stop laying eggs because they'd like to hatch some. They commence sitting all day and all night. However, they sit haphazardly -- meaning even if the activities that followed the pictures below were successful, the hens wouldn't tend the eggs 23 days straight and they'd never hatch.

For a few days one of the hens was sitting in the top box, which was empty. Then the other hen started sitting below, on an actual bunch of eggs.

After a few days they got lonely and started sitting together, both in the top bunk, ignoring the eggs in the bottom bunk.


Today I got aggravated. When hens are "brooding" they don't lay eggs and hardly eat or drink, they just sit in there the whole dang day. What's the point of that?

So I threw out those neglected eggs, because if they are half-incubated there might be things inside a person wouldn't want to see.

Then I performed a lockout by disattaching the metal door from the space-age German electronic eye light-sensing door opener.

The hens couldn't believe it.


Soon two roosters came thundering into the area. Red Alert!


The hens felt cornered. They didn't want to leave the top rung of the ladder, just in case the door should magically open and allow them to resume sitting together in the top bunk. But the roosters were in harrassment mode and getting away from them was a high priority.


Shortly after this picture was taken, both hens abandoned the ladder and ran away with the roosters running after them. Everybody was squawking.



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