For those who remember about the missing buff a few weeks ago:

Today, July 22, I was checking the greenhouse making sure all the chicks were back inside the run after foraging  before closing up for the middle of the day and -> I found a nest with 5 eggs in it. Hard to see …

Not a new nest, the eggs at least did not look freshly laid – and I knew – that buff that went missing a few weeks ago – that was her, she was broody with a mind of her own after all. If I had not seen a splash foraging about in that area and was making sure she was no longer there – it would have been a long time before I found them.

It is a bittersweet end to a little story: I had noticed a buff missing one afternoon, no matter how many times I counted, one was simply not there. I vaguely remembered one of them clucking like a broody briefly one afternoon, only there was no additional broody on a nest. I didn’t think much more of it at the time. Then, a day or 2 later, when a buff went missing and I mentioned it on facebook, a few folks said: she is off on a nest somewhere. I looked around “everywhere” reasonable, nothing, but I was hopeful. And then, a few days later, I found her – taken and eaten the same way as the roosters. Only that there was all that fresh looking soaked grain in her crop – as if she’d just eaten a little while ago, within 24 hours. Anyway, I was confused as to what really happened and worried that the predator was taking them not just in the very early morning, but in the day now, while they forage and that he’d come back for his prey.

And then today I found the nest in the greenhouse. So the “guys” who said she was gonna show up with babies were sorta right. That would have been a very nice surprise after 3 weeks her showing up with the babies. I never checked the greenhouse because at the time, the greenhouse was not open to the chickens and I did not know one of them had figured out a way in and out … (easy once she figured it out).

It is more sad in a way, that she was taken while assembling her clutch. On the other hand, she was doing what her instinct told her, and as in nature, there are predators out there. She musta been out early one morning. She was being her best chicken self – gone now.

So the lessons: when a hen disappears and there is no body and no feathers, it really is possible that she is just hiding being broody on a nest.

As for me, I am just a tad less worried for them during the day …. that is good, though not enough to relax my routine.

And finding the clutch puts an end to wondering what happened …. sweet girl.