Flowers and eggs

This morning I headed out to have a little talk with the chickens.  On the way I noticed how pretty the flowers are.    The lantana blooms so pretty up until the first frost.

We seem to have a bumper crop of Granddaddy Longleg spider this year.  Do you see him?  I don't hate them, but I don't like them, either.  They are spiders, after all!  

I got these mums a couple of year ago to put outside around the time of Jackie's wedding.  They are in pots and have survived two summers with me and my sporadic watering schedule.  I think we are becoming friends.

Shiloh came with me to have my little chat with the girls.

 But, they didn't pay any attention to her so she gave up.

The issue we needed to discuss was about their egg production.  It has been horrible.  Yesterday they only gave me 2 eggs!  And there are 25 layers.  24 if Mr. Delaware turns out to be a Mr.

We just have a little egg operation here and I know that the amount of eggs I get can vary widely from week to week.  Usually that has to do with extreme temperatures or with stress.  Several things can stress a chicken.  Moving them from one pen to another, loud noises like hammering going on around them, or adding new chickens to the mix are all things that affect whether they lay or not.  Life has been very stable for them lately, though, and the weather is perfect.

The question we needed to discuss this morning was whether they were having some sort of problem I was unaware of or if a chicken snake was stealing my eggs.

But, when I did a little fact check before we began our pow wow, this is what I found.

 All together this morning there were 9 eggs!  That is more than I have gotten for the last three days combined!  I still don't know what the problem has been, but they decided to correct it on their own.

At least I hope that is what it is.  And not just that I beat the chicken snake to the hen house.