The egg thief is discovered!

I have been on the trail of an egg thief for a while now.

You might have read in a previous piece that now the chickens have started laying eggs again we are getting around 8 eggs a day. This might seem like a good return until you discover that there are about fifty birds here at the Rock, so amongst the flock there are a fair number of hangers on or dinners as they are more properly known.

Tracey has a thing about ducks, so there are various webbed feet dinners wandering around. Victor the Muscovy drake and his two wives whose names escape me. Tracey also names all the animals here, I think in the hope that we wont eat a named beast. If you look in our freezer its easy to see its a ruse that doesn't work. Then there is Daffy, another Muscovy drake who was an egg about 8 months ago. He and four other ducklings were found under their mum one rainy day last year. He in fact had been abandoned and was at deaths door when I found him on the compost heap by the back gate. An hour in the incubator and he was fine and now has two female ducks of his own to look after. The two spare Muscovy drakes were put in the freezer last Sunday.

There is Brandy, a huge Brecon Buff gander and his two mates Bella and Blossom. Bella is a new addition to the Rock and Brandy has effectively dumped Blossom for the much larger Bella. We hope to have eggs that we can hatch for Christmas Geese.

Almost as noisy as this trio area pair of Chinese Geese Sid and Sally. Sid replaced Harry who unexpectedly died.

Then there is an Indian Runner duck, Flo Jo, her mate was fox fodder a while back, three Pekin ducks, Baby, Mindy and Apple (Three others also fell to the fox) three more rescue ducks, Rouen types ( 9 others were on the fox shopping list)

God knows how many bantams there are, they have a habit of sneaking off for a month, sitting on a dozen or so eggs and before you know it you have a plague of chicks. We also have three Winnicots, a cock and two hens, the cock Walter replaced Humphrey who was eaten by the beagles when he was accidentally shut in their kennel, and Humphrey had replaced Boris who was eaten by me two hours after he attacked me nearly taking off my kneecap. Unfortunately for him it was the second time he had done it and I was carrying my trusty machete as he closed in for the kill. Beak and talons were no match for Brazilian razor sharp steel and I sat down to a very nice coq au vin courtesy of Boris the bastard.

We have as our stock hens Black Rocks, a very hardy, good laying good eating bird. Of the ten we bought when we moved in we still have all ten, so they must have a strong survival instinct having avoided the fox and the pot. They are our main layers. There are numerous cross breeds and one white hen, Henrietta, we bought her as a meat bird but shes a top layer and will hopefully produce some good crossbreeds with Budge the Jersey Giant Cock. Hes called budge as he was the only egg out of 24 we bought from ebay that hatched. He then sang like a budgie for about a month while in a cage in the kitchen.

So with this many birds the egg to egg hole ratio is not good, neither is the cost of food cost per egg ratio in our favour. The ducks are a complete pain and do nothing except eat, shag and make mud. In fact they have turned a sizable piece of grassland into a slimy, muddy scale model of the Somme Battlefield. They can often be seen running from their trenches to play in newly created muddy pools in no mans land.

So the loss of eggs to thieves is not to be taken lightly.

The dogs were prime suspects, and have in the past been guilty of the misdemeanour. New nesting boxes, better security on the door led to them giving up trying.
Magpies were blamed, guns were purchased, hides were manned and yes occasionally they did take one but they soon sussed that they were in severe danger of death so stayed away.
The chickens themselves were blamed, in fact one day I found a hen with yolk down its front and a wet beak. I was on the point of sending it to meet Boris's friend, Mr Machete but I was merciful. Actually the thought of plucking the thing stayed its execution, that and the fact I couldn't be 100% sure it was the culprit. Its one of the rules of smallholding, it takes longer to pluck the bird than it does to cook it. These rules we are discovering as we go along, rules like do it now before it rains, tools are never where you left them and any job you finish causes two more jobs to be done.

Anyway, I digress, the egg thief.

Well the egg thief can now be revealed having been caught in the act. There was no denying it, he was caught actually eating two eggs out of the nesting box. Karl saw him doing it.

The thief.

It is Trevor.

Trevor?

He is a miniature shetland pony.

Did I tell you our animals are mental?