Eggcellent invention!

Do I ever get tired of bragging about Kevin's ingenuity?... Uh, nope! (even at the risk of making him blush).

We're learning our second batch of Bettys behaves differently. We have a couple of hens that don't seem to bother getting off their perch to lay their egg. The perch is approximately 6 ft high (nearly 2 m), so the result of laying an egg from that height is a smashed egg on the floor. Even though the floor is covered with wood chips, clearly not enough to cushion the blow.

We have 14 Bettys and we average 12 eggs a day. Sometimes we get 11 and other times 13. We've only ever collected 14 eggs once. The first batch of Bettys were much more consistent and laid each one egg per day.... for nearly 18 months. They were completely reliable. Batch #2, not so much. Losing one or two eggs every day really adds up.

We have several people we exchange our eggs with or sell to, but we've had to refuse some people because we don't have as many at the end of the week as we 'should'.

So Kevin put on his thinking cap and devised a net to catch the eggs. At first the hens we're not sure about this new contraption and none of them bothered sleeping on the perch for the first day or two. It seems they're getting use to it and it's working like a charm.

Kevin goes up every morning to open up their pen door and collects the rogue eggs in the net. It's been a week and it's working beautifully. Yay, Kevin!