Happy, Happy Day! (Or, Egg Independence Day)

Back in May I told you about Molly Weasley’s crop problems.  Then, I left you hanging without an update. 

Molly’s crop seemed to clear up after her daily massages and diet of soft foods so I started letting her eat her regular diet again after a week.  This return to her regular diet didn’t seem to have an ill effect on her crop, but she gained a strange habit.  Suddenly, Molly wanted to drink her water out of the dirt.  I have always added grit to her food, she eats grass, bugs and dirt from the front yard and she scratches in the dirt for cracked corn and compost so I’m not sure why she felt the need to drink from the ground as well.

Every time I took fresh water to the coop, Molly pecked at the container to try and splash water onto the ground.  If I dumped water out she joyfully scratched at it and drank it.   

Molly was eating so much sand that her droppings started to look like sand castles.  You probably think I’m joking.  I’m not.  I’d take a picture and post it but then I’m sure my husband would have me committed.  He already thinks I take way too many pictures of otherwise trivial things like jars of jelly and whatever we ate for dinner.

Back to the crop.  It seemed to be maintaing a normal size and was regrowing feathers so I figured eating all that sand was some sort of chicken self-doctoring.  After several weeks of sand eating and a normal sized crop, I was expecting my dear hen to start laying again.  No luck. I waited.  And waited.  Still nothing.

Then Molly started picking at the little girls.  You know the term, “hen-pecked”?  That’s what my chicks were.  Luna even had a bloody spot near her tail.  I was at my wit’s end with Molly.  Not laying was one thing but now tormenting the rest of the flock?  Not cool. 

 To make matters worse, one day shortly after the Coop Loop I picked up Molly and found a large, sandy scab on her crop.  Apparently all that sand was more than her crop could take; it seemed to have ruptured causing sand to ooze out.  The sand had all hardened and despite my strong urge to pick at the sandy clump, I resisted.  I checked on Molly’s scab every day to make sure it wasn’t getting worse.  After a couple days, the wound was significantly smaller.  Shortly after, to my great surprise, it had completely healed!

Despite Molly’s return to good health, we were still without eggs.  And, the girls were still being tormented.  I was just about ready to send Molly to the soup pot.

And then . . .

I found this:

The end of a long, eggless spell!

Beautiful, isn’t it?