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Wanderlust

She's a beautiful bird with glowing red feathers. She is very friendly and investigative. This bird prefers to roost with the rooster and smallest bantam/banty hen, Sugarcakes. She is often with these two chickens or off exploring on her own. Several times while in temporary confinement with the other chickens while the coop was under construction, this hen escaped. She visited the dog's area at least once and often went into the horse barn and pasture area. Twice she ventured as far as the house from the barn (about 100 yards). During the final days of the coop's construction, she was very curious about it and she wandered in and out of it freely while we were in and around it working on it LOUDLY. She appears fairly unflappable and she is very friendly and easy to catch. If I am close enough, I can usually coax her to come to me just by extending my hand or tapping the ground and calling to her. She is fairly dominant at the feed dish, often standing in the middle of the treat tub where I provide fresh vegetables and garden scraps.

I am fairly certain this hen is laying. She is usually the most broodish, appearing to want to seek out a place to lay most of the morning and some parts of the afternoon, even if I suspect she's already laid that day. She is often curious about the laying boxes, especially if they already have eggs in them. I have also observed her constructing a nest around herself but she is usually on the nest for a brief period, frequently seeking out a secluded, dimly-lit area to lay or nest.

Today I watched as she accidentally broke open an egg by standing on it "just so" while it was in the nest. This was largely my fault as I placed the eggs under her as she was exploring a laying box this evening. The good news is that this hen was not the least bit interested in the broken egg so I do not suspect she purposely broke it. However, I did remove it from the nest and dump it, without it's shell, into the treat pan and this hen was one of the first to pounce and eat with vigor.

I suspect the egg, a medium-sized, pale green one, may have had a thinner-than-desirable shell, despite large amounts of oyster shell and dried egg shells free-fed back to the hens. I have changed their feed and the current layer ration offers a fairly high Calcium percentage so that should improve.

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UPDATE! August 19, 2007 - Today I watched Wanderlust lay a light brown egg with white speckles.