Those Birds Aren't Bright. At All.

I've been down and out for almost a week. It feels like I've lost a part of life. But the good news is that between the antibiotics, steroids, narcotics, and cold meds, I'm on the mend. I can almost hear again, I am pain free, and only get random fevers once daily. And besides the need to nap every afternoon, or at least stop for an hour or so and put my feet up, I'm nearly back to normal capacity.

While I was pretending to be normal today, I went up to care for my chickens. It's been a while since I was there. Having responsible kids is epic. Today I realized that my chickens are the dumbest birds alive. My husband just rolled his eyes. Again.

I had been getting a lot of soft shelled eggs recently, and spent a lot of time on the Google trying to figure out why. I've also consulted the wisdom of Facebook. Both sources told me that the birds could be lacking calcium in their diets. Crushed oyster shells or egg shells would remedy that. Also, stress can cause soft shelled eggs. A lot of silly things stress chickens, like getting caught in a rain storm. But mine aren't free range birds and have a run attached to the coop. Getting caught in a rain storm isn't an options since they're always right there and can get in.

Except today my hens got caught in the rain storm. Clearly they're too dim witted to simply, you know, WALK INSIDE when it rains. We're talking all of three feet. I'll probably be getting more soft shelled eggs from the stressed and wet chickens that were too dense to walk three feet into the dry shed.

I bought them crushed oyster shells while in town and stopped at the coop to scatter some around for the girls. I'm all about troubleshooting. They were so very interested in the bag of Whatever It Is That I Had, but it turns out they wanted the plastic strip I pulled off the bag far more than they wanted the crushed oyster shells.

I'm pretty sure I'll be getting  more soft shelled eggs this week. My hens are dim witted. And that may be an understatement.