More eggs from new hens

I had been very excited about the Easter Egger laying her beautiful, light blue eggs. A couple of days later, I opened the main coop and found that she was not, in fact, the first one to start laying:

This clutch was in the far corner, where it was difficult for me to reach, so I laid down a piece of plastic trellis to discourage nesting there.

It worked well enough - they are now laying eggs just in front of the trellis, on the right side. I can reach that spot easily, so it's a fair compromise.

At the same time, I removed the water bucket and food bin from the newer coop, and closed up the front panel. (I'd been leaving it open to encourage more exploration.) Now their intended nesting spots are more dark and hidden, so hopefully they'll start using them more often. I also placed a ceramic egg into each of the nesting boxes.

Successfully contained chickens, scaly leg mites

After severely cutting back their flight feathers plus hacking away at their roosting tree, I have finally convinced the bantam roosters to stay put inside their run. Burr has decided to sleep on top of the coop, but Hamilton and Laurens go inside to cuddle up with the pullets (and Lafayette, the Cuckoo Marans who has never made trouble).

Burr on top of the coop.

They are SO upset that I woke them up.

As a bonus, the old rooster who had already lived on the farm has also decided to sleep indoors, in the original coop with the older hens. He's had scaly leg mites for a long time, but I wasn't able to do anything about it earlier. He won't let me catch him during the day and he had been roosting in the pecan tree as well. This evening, I put a towel over him, bundled him up, and thoroughly coated his feet with vaseline. I'll keep it up twice a week until the signs of mites disappear.

Blue egg from Easter Egger

Found a perfect blue egg in one of the nesting boxes! It's funny that the first of the new hens to lay an egg happens to be the only one whose eggs will look completely different from everyone else's.