I Wonder

NOTE: This post has been edited because Virginia's math wasn't mathing.

We have chickens. We have 10 Rhode Island Reds ~ 1 rooster and 9 hens ~ and 11 Buff Orpingtons ~ 1 rooster and 10 hens. This means we have 39 hens. Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons are good, solid, steady layers. The Rhode Island Reds will lay 200-300/year and the Buff Orpingtons will lay 200-280/year. If you take the mid-range (240) that means we should be getting 4,560 eggs/year or 12-13 eggs/day.

Yet we are not.

We started out well, but in the last few months this has decreased to 8-10/day.

These girls get quality feed with appropriate protein percentage. They have a LARGE area to wander and forage. Even with the foraging available to them, they are eating their feed so they are getting plenty of protein. They are secured from predators and the roos are really good about scaring off things they perceive to be a threat. I do not think it is a snaky area (though if we find any we turn them into good snakes). We sometimes would find a few eggs outside of the coop in a depression by one of the pine trees, but even with daily egg hunts we were just not finding more eggs.

I began to wonder why we were not getting more eggs. Cletus thought it might be because he was tending to them (he seriously overestimates my chicken whispering ability).

Early this week I was out in their run getting them put up for the evening and giving thanks I am able to do that now! I wandered over to the concrete slab to chase some of them off and herd them into their coop. On that slab are two large plastic barrels. The blue barrel was already bottom-up but the white barrel was not. Since there was some rain in the forecast, I walked over to turn it over.

Et voila! That is 18 whole eggs, 3 eggs that had exploded (be glad you cannot smell that!), 1 crushed beer can (?), and 1 very happy fly.

I have an answer!

Now can anyone explain the beer can to me?