Easter Egg Hunt Every Day

I believe I started raising chickens in July or August 2013?  In the beginning I only had two roosters and four hens...it was pretty easy to start.  I raised them in a chicken tractor we built.  It was really heavy, still is...but we use to move it around every few days.  It has been stationary for awhile now, it sunk into the ground in soft sand and I can't move it by myself, it will take a tractor and a couple of people to get it out the wheels on it have sunk into the ground about six inches at least.  My chicken tractor was fine for the six, but because we only got one or two eggs a day the first winter...we got four more chickens to add to our flock...it has kind of snowballed since then but I built an extension to the tractor that I could drag around to fresh ground that gave my chickens additional space.  There are four nest boxes in my chicken tractor...they stayed enclosed so no real hunting was involved for eggs, although they did lay eggs in the run sometimes.  My husband got the bright idea to use a golf ball retriever to get the ones in the run, great job honey!

Anyway, after my hens started going broody and we let them sit and hatch chicks, we decided to build a big coop to house them all.  In the mean time we got some baby ducks!  After brooding the ducks I needed a place to put the ducks while they were growing.  I built a grow out pen.  The grow out pen I made so that it could be moved fairly easily, four panels with rings that I could drop metal rods down into...it was a bit heavy to move each panel, but it was possible.  I actually had the ducks set up in the backyard, at the time it was the only area that was fenced.  This grow out pen was later used to make my "Rooster Condo"...it has all been a learning process.  I also found geese at a feed store and those soon were added.

Oh gosh, getting off track...but, my poultry yard and area has expanded a lot. In the beginning I just fenced around the chicken tractor.  I then fenced around my garden area next to that area, then after we built the big chicken coop, we fenced off an area for the ducks, then around the coop and another couple of garden areas and added a large gate to be able to mow the area.  I added dividers inside the area so that I could separate roosters or different ages of chickens too.  Then after hatching a lot of chicks this year, adding more ducks, more geese and turkeys...I fenced an even larger area and this is the area we have started having to hunt for eggs.

My older chickens still lay in nest boxes for the most part.  I had some issues when I had so many broody hens, but I added more nest boxes to fix that.  Now the chicks that hatched in February are starting to lay, they lay in the bushes, clumps of grass, next to the wood pile, in flower pots, under the nest boxes, in the turkey pen, in the chicken coops run, under the roosts, behind rain barrels, the ducks and geese lay in dewberry patches or sometimes under a tree that has some bushes around it and vines.  Some days I will be out filling pools and waterers and all the sudden I will turn around and there will be an egg practically laying at my feet.  I even found one on top of my patio table just laying there suddenly.  The ducks have laid in their pools before, and if I disturb an area they like to lay by putting straw or soft grass or something down over the dirt, they will move to another area sometimes...so, it is a constant hunt, my husband calls it an Easter Egg hunt, but the poultry are the ones hiding the eggs!

I am going to make a couple of large ground nest boxes big enough for the geese, ducks or turkeys to lay in...hopefully they will figure out what they are for.  I have one made that the frame is made from 1"x6" wood but I put cage wire as the bottom and raised it up off the ground a touch so the nest will stay dry.  Time will tell if they will use it.