Broody Hens

We have 8 nesting boxes in our hen house.  Nine if you count the milkcrate with hay in it on the floor.  It's an overflow nesting box, and it's a good thing we have it.  Right now we have 5 hens that are broody.  Here are four of them right here:

Broody hens have gotten the motherly instincts.  They want to sit on their eggs and incubate them.  The incubation period is 21 days.  Broody hens, during this time, may stop laying eggs.  The trouble is, we have 40-something laying hens right now, with another 13 in a chicken tractor that we hatched out in our incubator from our fertilized eggs.  We don't need additional chicks at this time, so I reach under these hens each afternoon and snatch the eggs from beneath them.  They are very protective of their clutch of eggs during this stage, and they always fluff their bodies up and peck my fingers as I reach underneath them.  They don't like this at all!

They sit on their nests all day long in the sweltering heat.  I've moved water tubs into the hen house so that they can have water when they need it.  Most things I've read say that a hen will "break" her broodiness after 21 days, but we don't always see this happen.  Their biological clock is ticking and they desire to hatch out some babies.  Some of the broody hens sit on NO eggs.  Others are sitting on a chalk egg that we have in the box to deal with rat snake problems.  They don't know what they are sitting on.  They just want to sit.

This would be a perfect time to just put 8 or so eggs underneath each one, but we don't need anymore baby chicks for our flock.  We are gathering, on average, about 22 eggs each day.  We eat all we can, keep our kids and family members stocked with fresh eggs and sell the rest.  One of the things we've been eating for lunch is egg salad sandwiches.  I'm not a big fan of mayonnaise, but my wife makes homemade mayonnaise that is good, so she'll boil some eggs, cut them up, add olive salad mix and salt and pepper and serve over some toasted sourdough bread for an open-faced sandwich.  We enjoy that for lunch.

Hopefully, at some point soon, the broody hens will be broken and will once again be out on the pasture foraging in the grass for bugs and worms.

Today We Bought Three Eggs

Following the mink debacle, we have 32 hens left.  On average they give us 21 eggs each afternoon that we pick up.  The birds roam around all day long out in the pasture, scratching through cow patties for bugs and worms and "recycled" grain.  They'll chase june bugs and other critters that creep, crawl and fly.  They eat clover and other grasses.

Long about mid-morning, they'll make their way to the hen house and lay their eggs.  You can always tell when they've laid because they sing a little song as if they are proud of their accomplishment.  I'll have to record it one day and post it.  It is a lot prettier than the shrill, loud cry of the rooster as he exerts dominance over the flock.

We produce a good number of eggs and we eat a good number of eggs each day.  "It's power food!" one of our customers said.  Still, we went to the feed store and bought 3 brown eggs:

They aren't for eating.  Not for us, anyway.  These are chalk or ceramic eggs.  When I gathered eggs the other afternoon, the very last ceramic egg in the laying boxes was gone.  For every ceramic egg that goes missing, that means there's a dead or dying snake somewhere.

You see rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) get into the hen house often and eat eggs.  When they are in the barn, I let them go as I am more than happy with them seeking out and eating rats.  But when they start eating our eggs, that's where I put my foot down.  I put a ceramic egg in the laying boxes closest to the little patch of woods.  The snakes slither into the hen house, curl up in the box and have themselves an egg breakfast.  Except, when they eat a ceramic egg, they develop a massive case of constipation and end up dying from the blockage.  Sometimes, we'll find the skeleton and the ceramic egg and we're able to use it again.

What I've learned to do is before I put them in the boxes, I'll get a marks-a-lot permanent marker and put a stripe around the egg.  The ceramic eggs look so much like a real egg, that I'll tend to pick them up.  They don't crack on the edge of the black cast iron skillet!  The snakes or the chickens don't seem to mind the black stripe, but it really helps us out.

Here's the nest with some good old country eggs along with the "snake bait" egg.  You see what I mean?  It looks so realistic.  The stripe really helps.

We're coming into prime snake season as it warms up, so we'll watch to see how long our striped eggs last.  A ceramic egg costs as much as a dozen real eggs cost.  I've heard a golf ball works just as well, but I kind of like supporting our local feed store and the eggs have a more pastoral feel than a golf ball does.  Beware serpents!  Things aren't always what they seem...

Gimme My Egg Back!

It hasn't even been a month ago since I posted the FAKE EGGS POST.  In it I explained that snakes had run off with almost all of our nest eggs.  The post shows how we purchased more and marked them with a Sharpie so as not to get them confused.  This afternoon it was almost time for church, but I decided that I could go collect eggs first, package them and put them away.

When I opened the henhouse door, this is what greeted me:

You can see by the bulge in the snake's neck that he has swallowed on of our new ceramic eggs!  See, this snake is doomed.  His digestive system will not break down and digest a solid ceramic egg.  He has a death sentence.  The thing is, he'll slither out to the woods and die, taking my ceramic egg with him.  No sir, that's not gonna happen.

I grabbed a shovel and gave the rat snake a chop behind the head.  I used my foot to push the egg out of the snake.

The snake was greedy.  In addition to the ceramic egg, he ate a real chicken egg.  It burst when I popped the snake with the shovel and egg yolk ran out of the snake.  Hens quickly surrounded the deceased snake and began eating the yolk.  Cannibals!

On the bright side, I got the ceramic egg back and put it back in the nesting box.  All's well that ends well.  It didn't end so well for the snake.  We let these snakes go when they are in the barn.  They do a service by eating rats.  When they enter the hen house, however, it's a different thing altogether.  They pay the ultimate price for this transgression.

These snakes are pretty much harmless to people.  They'll just give you a good scare, because they get so big.  This one measured about 5 1/2 feet long.

Tricia was glad it was me that found the snake.  She's killed them before, but she'd rather not.  I tossed the ceramic egg back in the nesting box and for the time being, we still have our full inventory of fake eggs in the boxes.

Hope This Does the Trick

I've reported about a problem we're having with our hens.  They've picked up a really bad habit and it has spread to many in the flock - they are eating their eggs!  We've tried several things to try to stop this.  Some said that this is a result of them not getting enough calcium.  To remedy that, we put even more oyster shells out for them.  This didn't do anything to solve it.

Currently, we go outside several times a day and gather eggs as they are laid before the egg-eaters arrive, peck the eggs and eat the contents and then the shell.  By doing this, we've at least been able to get a few eggs each day.  We have seriously thought of putting all of our hens in the freezer and starting with fresh pullets.  We'll try another solution before we go that route.  It arrived in the mail today!

These are ceramic eggs.  We've used ceramic eggs, wooden eggs, and chalk eggs in nesting boxes before, but they were to combat another enemy - chicken snakes.  Chicken snakes would eat the fake eggs and it would kill them.  Over the years, I've lost many fake eggs as the snakes eat them, crawl off somewhere and die.  I've recovered a few from snake skeletons, but most are gone.

Some people have had success with these to break their hens of the egg-eating habit.  You simply place a ceramic egg or two in the nesting boxes.  When the egg eater(s) come and peck on the ceramic egg, they get a surprise.  The hard egg hurts their beak.  When it doesn't break, they move on and eventually tire of pecking on an egg that yields no nourishment, thus breaking the habit.

This egg-eating habit of the hens not only reduces the eggs we actually get to eat, but it makes collecting the remaining eggs a real chore.  The eggs that don't get eaten, are very difficult to clean as they have dried yolk on them and hay and feathers and dirt stick to the egg.  Washing the eggs with water to clean them washes off the protective "bloom" and reduces the shelf life of the egg.  I didn't want to wait another day.  I walked out to the hen house tonight with the ceramic eggs.

The hens were nestled all snug in their beds, with thoughts of egg-eating rushing through their heads

I opened the nesting boxes and deposited a ceramic egg in each box.

The eggs look mighty real. 

We'll see if this works and will report back to you!

Extreme Home Makeover - Hen House Edition

I posted last week about our hens going on strike and not laying eggs and how we temporarily installed a light in the hen house to help give them a few more "daylight" hours so that perhaps we'd get eggs in the cold, gloomy, dark days of winter.  We got that done last week.  A day afterward - no eggs.  Two days afterward, no eggs.  Three days afterward - you guessed it, no eggs.

Tricia and I were talking about doing a little renovation to the hen house to solve a sanitary issue we were dealing with in the hen house.  We have nesting boxes that line about half of each interior wall on each side.  The hens, when they are laying, fill those boxes with eggs.  But there is something else they do in the laying boxes - they roost on them at night and poop in them.  They are not good house keepers.  It also means extra work for Benjamin as he has to clean some of the eggs that get poop on them.  If you wash the eggs, it reduces the shelf life as it removes the "bloom" or protective covering that the hen excretes on the eggs to keep bacteria from entering the eggs' pores.

But we have a plan that we enacted to mitigate this problem.  We decided to build some doors that cover the boxes during the night time hours.  If this renovation is successful, the hay in the boxes will stay clean.  Each morning after we finish milking, we'd open the laying box doors and they'd be able to lay.  A while back, a friend had given me some old cabinet doors that he was throwing away.  I figured they might work.  I pulled them out of the rafters of the barn and measured them.  They fit perfectly!  I only had four hinges on hand, but I figured that if I would 'tie' all the doors together with some wood strips, I would only need four hinges - two on one side and two on the other.  We removed all of the soiled hay and poop and composted it in the garden.  Then we filled with fresh hay.  It ain't pretty, but you can see the finished work below.  The doors are open and that signals the hens that it is time to clock in and get to work laying eggs.

Here is the nesting box door on the other side in the closed position.  In the evening when we feed and separate the cows, we close the doors.  The hens will roost on top of the boxes and poop on them.  The nice thing is that the doors open toward the middle of the hen house, allowing all the poop to fall to the middle of the hen house.  The hay inside the boxes is kept fresh and clean.  The eggs are spotless.  You can see how the wood strips tie the 3 cabinet doors together, allowing two door hinges on either side to do the trick.

Here is the other side in the closed position.

Like Motel 6, we leave the lights on for ya (the hens), but so far no eggs.  The inventory of eggs dwindles.  The clock ticks...  Tick tock, tick tock. 

While I was building the nesting box doors, I looked at the ceiling and the rafters was filled with cobwebs.  I've never cleaned it.  Cobwebs aren't all bad.  One time, we de-horned a calf and the blood vessel in the horns would not stop bleeding.  In the middle of the night, I went to check on the calf and there was a puddle of blood where she was bleeding!  We called the veterinarian at night and he told us about an old remedy to stop bleeding:  He instructed us to pack the area bleeding with cobwebs and they would stop bleeding.  We did it and it worked! 

Having a few cobwebs around is sort of like a first aid kit.  But we had more than enough cobwebs.  It was time to spruce things up.  I got the broom and put on a mask and safety glasses and began sweeping all the cobwebs down.  It was time-consuming work, pulling the cobwebs off the broom.  The hens gathered and ate the spiders that fell.  It was a happy time for the hens.  Not so much for me.  Finally, though, the hen house was clean.

The hens were happy, I think.  So happy that they laid two eggs!  You can see them in the bottom left hand corner of the picture below.

But I still have a mystery to solve.  Did they begin laying because of the light?  Or was it the clean nesting boxes?  Or perhaps a high protein diet of spiders?  Too many variables.  All I know is that the hens are putting their picket signs down and slowly beginning to lay eggs again.  That's something to crow about!

Spring Chicken

Have you ever heard someone remark, "I'm no spring chicken anymore."?  This generally means that the person speaking is saying that they aren't as young as they used to be in how they look, feel, or in their energy level.  Looking around to see where this phrase originated from, most say that farmers found that chickens born in the spring were more desirable at market than their older, tougher chickens.  When a farmer would try to pull the wool over someone's eyes and say that an older chicken was a younger chicken, the prospective buyer would say "That's no Spring chicken!"

Actually we don't have any Spring chickens in the flock.  Our youngest ones began laying in the late Fall.  I tell you though, they all know Spring has arrived.  They run around with more enthusiasm and energy and purpose than they did in the winter.  This is due to more bugs and green grass to eat along with nice weather.  Doesn't nice weather make you feel the same?


Part of the flock foraging around for some rice I just threw them to eat.

Here's the Boss of the Barnyard, strutting his stuff in front of his ladies.  He's a real show-off.  We have several other roosters - two Barred Rock Roosters and an Aracauna rooster.  This guy's the king, though.

The cock of the walk

With the onset of Spring, the egg production has picked up.  Finding their eggs and the different spots that they lay them is like playing hide and seek.  The hens lay them everywhere in their favorite spots, so we're constantly looking.  Sometimes they'll lay in a box by the feed troughs for Daisy and Rosie.

Pretty brown eggs

We also have five laying boxes for them made out of old milk crates.  You can see that they are all full and a Rhode Island Red hen is patiently waiting in line for the next box to open up. 


There's no room in the Inn.

Well here is Sally Henny Penny laying an egg.  I was fortunate enough to catch the whole process.

Hey, can't you see I'm busy here?

She has just laid her egg and is getting off the nest so that the Rhode Island Red hen can sit in this spot.  She's a brown egg layer, so hers will be the one in the front or the back in the photo below. 


All done!

Now here is the neat part.  If you look below, you can see Sally's beak is open.  She is singing her happy, I just laid an egg song.  Seriously.  After hens lay an egg, they sing a little song as if to draw attention to the fact that they just did a good thing.  Isn't that neat?  They're proud of themselves.  Do you ever sing a little song when you do something good that you're proud of?


Sally's "happy song" (I just laid an egg!)

Here is the Little Red Hen sitting in her little red nest.  It is actually a feed trough that I converted into a nest.  The hooks broke off and it was unusable as a trough, so I screwed it to the wall to serve as another nesting box and the hens took to it.


Rhode Island Red Hen

They also lay in the nesting boxes I have built into the chicken tractor.  This one below I call the Ford Eggsplorer.  The corrugated tin is attached to a hinged door that allows us to collect eggs from the outside of the tractor.  

Nesting boxes on the 'Ford Eggsplorer'

This photo shows the hinged door is open and we're collecting eggs.  This is Russ' job each day.  He collects all the eggs, washes the ones that need cleaning and then packages them for our use or for our customers.

Eggs in the nesting boxes

Finally, I have a nice basket of freshly laid eggs.  I always like the different shades of brown, green and blue eggs that our hens lay.  The taste of eggs from free range birds is eggceptional (sorry). 


Egg Basket

I've set the egg basket down by a navel orange tree that is in full bloom.  I could sit and inhale the scent of citrus blossoms till the cows come home.  Spring is truly a delightful time. 

Fresh Spring Eggs!