Cricket Cemetary

We had our first real good fall rain last night. When I woke up this morning to get the kids ready, there were about 50 crickets in my front hallway. I don't know if the rain wakes them up, or if they are just trying to find a dry spot. Crickets don't freak me out or anything, but they are mostly annoying, especially when they start singing at night.

Right away, I thought of my chickens. My chickens love live bugs. I went and got a chicken, plopped it down in my hall, and waited. It only ate one! So, figuring this chicken was defective, and grabbed a different one. This one wouldn't even think about eating one. Frustrated, I concluded I had to do it the hard way, and pick up each individual cricket, put them in a jar, and took them out to the chicken coop.

One of my hens showed especially a lot of interest, so when all the jar crickets were gone, I grabbed her. See; outside of my front door there were another 50 crickets (and I am not exaggerating). She went right to work, and in about 3 minutes cleared most of them out. 

The last 2 months or so, we haven't been getting any eggs. We finally found some after we got rid of the roosters, but then it stopped again. I figured that they were hiding them, so I started looking around in the bushes all along the house. At first I couldn't find any, but a few days later, I heard one of my hens making a ruccas by my air conditioner. She had made a little nest out of leafs, and was laying right there. The good thing: I know where she is laying. The bad thing: I have no clue how to get her to lay in the hen house. Actually, there is one solution, build a new fence. The one I have right now is pretty pathetic. Half the chickens just fly over it (and that's the half that actually lays eggs)

Also, 2 of my newer hens disappeared a few days ago. I thought for sure Justin or a coyote had gotten to them. But alas, there they were this morning, as if they had never left. I'll probably find a stack of 30 eggs in the woods some day.....