Chickenberries

I've got 9 hens. They live in a luxurious coop built especially for the chicken of discerning taste and impeccable style. They have a shady ground floor, a sunroom on the southwest wing, and a grand staircase leading to the laying room complete with eight nesting boxes; four on each side like saddlebags.
My girls all free range. Just about every day they are out, scratching up layers of carefully laid sheet mulch, eating newly planted mint (it will come back), and practicing their best freak-out flights across the open fields, just in case there ever is a real coyote stalking them. They are, as a bunch, quite diverse; different breeds, (same age) and varying cranial wattage, from chicken-bright to dullest bulb in the bunch. The latter would be the lone Americauna. The one who invariably paces back and forth in front of the open coop door for at least twenty minutes before getting the' jump up to get out' part. Every time. No fail.
They very recently began to lay, just a couple hens at first and it was completely obvious when they were fixin' to drop an egg. They would cluck in agony upstairs like an overdue pregnant woman in her eleventh hour of labor while I am out in the fields or listening from the kitchen window. Funny thing is, even though they have eight nesting boxes, every time I would collect eggs, all of them would be in the same compartment. I watched a little closer the next time I was out with them and saw the most hilarious thing...
You know back in the old days, when you and your friends would cram into a dark smelly bar to watch a friend's band play? ( "Theyre gonna get signed, dude. I heard Interscope called them..") And there was always a one-stall ladies room with grafitti on the walls, no seat covers, no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels, generally NO PAPER PRODUCTS of any kind anywhere? And you would wind up standing in line with four drunk girls waiting to pee, hoping desperately to get back to your pool game? Good. Well, same thing here, minus the bar, graffiti, lack of general hygiene, and drunk girls. I caught three hens either laying or waiting to lay in the same stall, like there were not seven other identical stalls to either side! Later, I came back, lifted the box roof and one of my French marans hopped off a pile of eggs a' la The United Colors of Benetton. Sigh...
And these girls have a ravenous sweet tooth. I have a very large strawberry patch in full swing. It used to be so cute to pick off the overripe or half slug-eaten berries and push them through the wire of their coop. They eagerly pecked at the sweet berries, and it was fun to watch the calamity ensue when one would snap up a whole one and run around yelling, as if to announce, "I got it! I got it!" At which point another hen would always snatch it away and peck it down to nothing before her very disbelieving eyes. Little did I know that we had created quite a strong taste for strawberries and they would not be denied.
Thus the newly coined term, "chickenberries". Far be it from me to spend every waking moment guarding the strawberry field from the inevitable carnage when the girls are out. I've seen what they can do to a fully ripe row of strawberries. It's like the killing fields. In mere moments, all traces of red berries are just bloody stains on the straw. Disturbing.

So, I've given it over to them fully. I mean, outside the few lucky moments when we turn up a pristine berry blanketed under deep green foliage, the strawberry patch is for pure bacchanalian chicken hedonism. Just keep your fingers out of the way. And keep those eggs coming, gals. And for God's sake, "Jump up to get out!" Sheesh..