Egg hunting and our free range chickens

Our chickens do have a mobile chicken tractor.  We put electric net fencing around it and we move both the tractor and the fencing around the yard periodically but that doesn't seem to matter.  We haven't clipped their wings and we spoil them something rotten so they know they can just fly over the electric fence and have free range of our entire yard whenever they like.  So they pretty much let themselves out when they want to graze :)

Its fine with us...the electric netting was really for keeping them safe at night from predators more than it was meant to keep them in.  Its healthier for them to graze all day on bugs and grasses and they'll eat less organic feed anyway but now they're laying.  We were curious whether some of them would end up laying their eggs in strange little hidden places around the yard.  Well, one of the kids thought it would be funny to put their buddy chicken straight into the feed bin to give them a "snack".  Well, that chicken decided to lay an egg right there in the bin.  Guess their not that picky about needing to lay their eggs up in their nesting boxes in their tractor!  Then it got worse...my three and a half year old came running in yesterday with an egg he'd found laying on the pavement near our house!  He was so proud of himself for finding an egg in such a weird place.

So...now we've got a daily, real life egg hunt going on around our house.  I'm guessing a lot more than just the five chickens are actually laying...but who knows where!

cartoon from http://wordsandtoons.com