Scoop in the Coop: In Which Bruce Discusses Chicken Anatomy

H2 came over and shot some video of my chickens as they were hanging around the coop and nesting boxes prior to laying their eggs.



Gail Damerow's "Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens" taught me how the dual purpose egg/crap canal works. 

Over the course of a couple hours every morning, the chickens make a series of loud ba-gawking noises prior to laying an egg. In some cases this is because their preferred nesting box is already occupied and they refuse to use one of the other two boxes. Other times all the boxes are full and they don't want to double up, though they will eventually. While they work up the "courage" to move into an already occupied nest, they'll walk around the coop loudly ba-gawking.  It's really loud.  Really loud.

In the next part of this video you'll see how I'm trying to get them to stop making so much noise.