To Catch A Thief

First, the good news. Over the last few days, it's finally grown colder with some properly chilly nights. So M has lit the fire and. since it also warms the water for all the radiators, the whole house is snug and cosy. The dogs love it, and so do we. Unfortunately, things are a little less peaceable up in the chicken shed since we have had an egg thief stealing, smashing and eating the contents of our chicken's beautiful eggs. I have had everyone under suspicion and launched the No 1 Chickens Detective Agency in Normandy. Investigations so far have revealed that the dogs are not prime instigators although they may be guilty of a fortuitous sharing of the spoils from time to time. My primary suspect is Jennifer, one of the ducks, since she had been noted to have a yellow eggy coloured streak on her chest. Since the chickens are still laying full blast despite having moulted, the odd loss hasn't caused us much of an issue so far - we still have eggs to give away when we want. But it's annoying-and could catch on...so today I had a minor brainwave following which M installed, at my request, this sort of guttering system (the silver coloured strip is a spare piece of gutter) which should catch the eggs and prevent them being rolled out of the egg boxes and smashed and eaten. How good is that??? Here's hoping it works. Today, M also finished the fence off round the side of the garden since the maize in the field next door was harvested yesterday. he nearly finished the fence off with the chickens still on the wrong side of it! They had a fantastic few hours pecking the remains of the stubble left behind.