Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan-Claire Mayfield. This is day three hundred and three of that project.

This quilt block shows a brown piece of fabric made to look like a big rectangular box on its side with demarcated boxes in pen in it. In each box is either yellow hay, or a light rust colored hen sitting on eggs looking at the viewer. This is against a blue splotch background fabric. — Click To Enlarge

These are nesting boxes. This is where the hens go to lay their eggs.

Each hen does not have its own nest. Hens like to lay eggs where other hens have laid eggs, so favorites will develop. There might be a dozen eggs in one nest to collect and only three or four in another nest.

If you have a hundred chickens, you’ll have ten nests, and that’s about the ratio you want and works out the best. When we started out, we had open nests, just like you see here in this block.

As time passed, we discovered it made them more comfortable if we put curtains on the front. So now our nesting boxes have little curtains where they can go in, be dark, and have privacy. This has helped the hens not hang out there and be broody cause it’s boring.

It’s not uncommon when the eggs are collected to collect ten to twelve eggs out of most of the nesting boxes.

The eggs are collected every day, of course.