Jackpot

Cubby and I were wandering around this morning, digging in the dirt, climbing on Tuffy, playing with hammers, and generally doing our usual thing when I spied a hen clucking her way along in the paddock near the house. She was making her way back to the rest of the flock, so I figured she had been laying her egg in the hay barn in the paddock. There's a little nest at the very top of the hay where I've been finding eggs, but only if the dogs don't find them first. They will apparently climb the hay bales to get up there, so great is their appetite for fresh eggs.

Their coats have been awfully shiny lately.

So I went into the garden and climbed up into the barn to get the egg and found that there was still a chicken in that nest. Which meant that the hen I saw had been coming from a different nest.

Well well well. An investigation was in order.

Cubby and I went into the paddock and around to the front of the barn, where I found a nest in the hay there and eight eggs.

HAHA, DOGS; I WIN.

With the egg I found in one of the laying boxes in the coop (laid by a nice, well-behaved chicken that actually uses the boxes put there for that purpose) and the one I recovered from the dog pen this morning before the dogs could get it, that makes ten. If I can manage to get the eggs from the stupid chicken under the forsythia hedge and the one still at the top of the hay barn, that would be an even dozen.

Now that's the kind of egg recovery I'm looking for. I just have to vigilant. And quicker than the dogs.