Jailbird Chicken

One of my chickens was eating her eggs. This is distressing because I prefer to eat those delicious eggs myself. Chickens are supposed to eat layer pellets and I refuse to switch diets with them.

Eventually the perpetrator was caught, yellow-beaked. Vo was sentenced to Chicken Jail.

She has her own roost, nest box, layer pellets, and water. All these things are in a wire cage inside the coop. As it happens, the cage top is higher than the main roost.

Now jail is the new normal for Jailbird Vo. She roosts on top of the cage. When she lays an egg, she goes inside to use her personal nest bucket.

She still fails to deliver eggs sometimes. If she has access to treats she will lay a shell-less egg the next day. But days where she eats nothing but pellets, I get an egg in her nest bucket.

The other chickens have reluctantly adjusted to her new jail privileges. Every night she gets on the roost with the others and then turns her back on them. She flies across the coop to the top of the cage. Then she turns to face them again, settles in, and smirks down on them.

She goes to sleep every night, relishing the envy of her peers and basking in the glow of stink eye.