Chicken Egg Blues

For the last two weeks, the three oldest ladies - Poppy, Red and Baron have stopped laying their eggs in the laying boxes and have started laying their eggs around the yard, particularly in the long grass in the ravine. Obviously, I'm not overly impressed with the change in their laying habits. I've literally spent hours searching under trees, in the ravine, in the corn fields etc etc. I've found the occasional individual egg here and there, but I figure I was down 20-25 eggs!!

Today, I went on an egg hunt again, and happily managed to find a stash of 9 eggs!

I have to do the water test on them to ensure they are still good. 

When checking eggs, put them in water if the float they are bad, if they sink they are good and if the sink, but one end rises they are still good, but should be used immediately

While out on my egg hunt today, I ran into this big fella. He's an Eastern American  toad (I think)

He was hanging out with the hens. He's lucky they didn't try to eat him!