FOR a while now we've been lambasting those famous chookies for not doing their duty and producing delicious free-range eggs. Turns out it wasn't their fault... oops... sorry!
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You know those moments in life where you happen to find yourself in the right spot at the right time to see something that makes everything make sense.
You might call them an 'aaaahhhh' moment.
Had one of those this week.
We'd been wondering why the chookies had stopped laying eggs.
Some people will tell you it's just a change in the weather that makes them stop.
The experts say chookies are actually sensitive to day length. Apparently, as the days get shorter so does the interest of your chookies in pumping out eggs.
Perhaps that's it... the days are certainly getting shorter now.
But the other morning offered up another 'just as plausible' explanation.
A while after I'd let the chookies out, I got a little generous and decided to head back out to give the old paddock horse Frank a few dippers of Gumnuts for breakfast instead of dinner - mix it up a bit.
Well, truth be told, he stands there every single morning beside his bin... waiting.... hoping. He knows Gumnuts are a night thing but that doesn't dampen his enthusiasm.
Most days though it ends in me ignoring the fact he's there and him then resorting to some, well, what I can only assume are less than complimentary noises in my general direction, as I head back around the side of the house.
Anyway, for whatever reason, this day he got his way.
So I put the Gumnuts in a bucket and headed back around toward the chook house.
I had never really noticed that each morning when I head toward that chook pen, Molly the border collie takes off the other way around the other side of the house.
And here's the reason why.
Coming around the corner of the house my attention was attracted to just one thing... the rear end of a black and white border collie hanging out of the chook house nesting box. Mystery solved.
The rear end of a black and white border collie hanging out of the chook house nesting box.
It appears the chookies might well have been laying all along and Molly has been pinching the goodies right out of that nesting box before we get home from work to retrieve them.
Mmmmm... thought her coat was pretty polished these days!
Probably also explains that other mystery - why does she always head over and look under that big native grass bush at the end of the house.
Perhaps we might find the chookies are actually preferring to lay their eggs in that spot and she's onto them.
So best offer up an apology to those chookies - seems they might not have deserved that lambasting after all.
