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Chaos in the Hen House

Friday, May 17, 2024 0:02

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What is it with chickens? There can be any number of perfectly good empty nest boxes available, but they want the one that another bird is already in! And they are quite persistent about it. They will push on in and sit on the current occupants head, even pecking her if necessary, to get her to move. If the invading hen happens to be one of Rooster Schooster’s favorites, he joins in with all manner of squawking!

Of course, when Schooster sets up a fuss, we have to go check. Even when we’re pretty sure it’s just over nest box squabbling, it could also be a snake or rat, both of which are egg and chick stealers. One time, we had a skunk brazenly walk into the coop in broad daylight and kill chicks! So, reasonable doubt requires making sure everything is okay.

Egg laying is bird business, which means that none of them is interested in (or compliant with) the humans’ opinions and solutions to the problem. Our efforts to sort things out are completely ignored, and the battle for the nest boxes continues with the sense of business as usual. For the most part it actually isn’t a problem. It becomes a problem, however, when the occupying hen/duck/turkey is broody and wants to hatch some eggs.

Broodies can be pretty persistent, but when they are successfully routed out of their nest by a rude chicken, they move and then stay there. This results in the eggs being abandoned which means none of them hatches. Our solution has become to keep an eye out and then move the eggs to the broodie’s new next.

This solution points to another problem however. That is, now there are more eggs so that they are at different stages of development and often become too numerous for the broody to properly cover and incubate.

I’m guessing that at about this point, many of you are wondering why we don’t use an incubator and skip the fiasco in the hen house. There are several reasons for this, which are logical to us, although they may not make sense to others.

We like having a mixed age flock because it helps keep egg production at a consistent level. Old hens eventually lay less, while younger hens lay the most. With a mixed age flock we can keep six hens and have a surplus of eggs to share year after year.
Consequently, we don’t need a specific number of new chicks every year. We don’t do the replacement flock thing, so just a trickle of new chicks each year works well for us.
It’s infinitely easier to let the birds hatch and rear their own young! This is nature’s way, after all, and it relieves us of the accompanying chores of the job. Plus, we firmly believe that babies deserve to have their own mother.

So, speaking of baby poultry and mothers, here is the first hatch of the year:

Yup, our turkey hen hatched out two duck eggs and they are all perfectly content with the arrangement. The added bonus for the ducklings is that the chickens—which tend to be ruthlessly mean toward newcomers—absolutely leave Jenny’s babies alone. They are all quite intimidated by her, so nobody messes with her young ‘uns!

Sadly, we lost one when it drowned in the big water dish. But the other is doing just fine.

Currently we have two broody ducks and a broody hen in the nest boxes. We’re waiting to see what’s next.

Chaos in the Hen House © May 2024

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Source: https://www.5acresandadream.com/2024/05/chaos-in-hen-house.html

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