Enough with the chickens already

Even I'm a little surprised at my fascination with the chickens. We've got photogenic ponies, rambunctious goats, and adorable lambs, and yet I stalk the chickens all day long. What's up with that?

For seven nights in a row now, Whitney has led Thing 1 and Thing 2 far up into the fir tree at dusk to roost. For seven nights in a row, I have gone out at dusk and brought them down. At first I had to physically pick up one of the babies and carry it to the coop. The baby would scream (well, peep REALLY loudly), Whitney would scramble after us, and the other baby would stumble desperately along behind. Now I just announce my presence and Whitney hops down with the little ones in tow. They toddle over to the coop and climb in. It's all very civilized. Previously, they've gone straight to the nesting box, but tonight Whitney tried to get them to roost inside. Here they are, just before they called it a no go and headed back to the nesting box.

Since I had the camera out I thought I'd try to get some shots of the lambs. They've gotten BIG. I let them out into the aisle of the barn every night while I feed and they follow me around like puppies. They won't go outside to eat grass though. Strange. In any case, my batteries died before I got to the lambs. All I got were these shots of the goats all lined up for dinner. Two months since shearing and LOOK at their fleeces. They sparkle. My goats SPARKLE. Can't beat that.

Where the wild things are

Whitney forgot she was a domesticated bird with cushy, indoor sleeping accommodations. How exactly did she get two little ones to a roost six feet off the ground?

Final tally

In the end, Whitney successfully hatched just the two chicks. Out of 20-25 eggs altogether, give or take. On the last day of her incarceration incubation period (the 22nd day after I shut her in to stop the ongoing egg shuffle), she still had six unhatched eggs. Over the three weeks she had gradually abandoned the rest and I had removed them.

There was one interesting fact about the six remaining eggs. Whitney herself is a brown egg layer. Five of the final six eggs were brown. Big deal, right? Well, actually she started out with about twice as many blue/green eggs as brown ones. To end up with a five to one ratio the other direction means she must have been systematically rejecting the blue and green eggs and keeping only the brown ones. Did she 'know' that the blue and green ones weren't hers? Seems so. Or maybe she just thought the brown ones were prettier. ;)

I think the rejection happened during turning. The nest box was big enough that occasionally, when she turned the eggs, she actually moved the whole clutch over six inches or so. Gradually, as she repeated this, the blue eggs would get left behind, cold and untouched at the fringes. Last week I started throwing out the abandoned ones. Finally, she was down to just brown ones.

Even so, by the end, her desire to sit was gone. She was interested only in the two live chicks. Starting around day 18 or 19, she clearly wanted to be up and out with the new chicks. I kept her barricaded in the nest area the full three weeks just to be sure. No more luck. So on day 22, I threw out the last of the eggs and there ended our first home hatching experience.

Whitney's devoted to the two she hatched -- even the one from the green egg. :)  She clucks and calls and teaches them to hunt for food. Good job Whitney.

One by one

Chick #1 has a sibling. 

This one looks just like broody Whitney.  

Mid-hatch.

Minutes after hatching yesterday afternoon.

 This morning.

Evolution 101

I'm pretty sure the number one rule of motherhood is don't eat the baby. Whitney, hen of broodiness, didn't get the memo. Sigh. Her parenting strategy so far? Sit lightly on eggs, keep eggs warm, turn eggs regularly, cluck softly to eggs, and finally, if hungry, eat eggs.

Yesterday was day 24 of Whitney's incubation stint. On day 21, the hypothetical hatch day for the original eggs, I checked the clutch up close. There were 15 eggs in the nest. Only seven had the markings I had made two weeks ago (out of about 12 originally marked). Nine of the 15 eggs were blue or green. Whitney lays brown eggs. On day 21 I also threw out all the unclaimed eggs in neighboring boxes, including several that had my original marking, but that had then been moved and abandoned on subsequent days. The day came and went with no chicks. Yesterday, day 24, Whitney had 16 eggs in her nest, only three of which had the markings I made on day eight and 11 of which were blue or green. The Ameraucanas continue to push Whitney off the nest when they want to use it.

The continued shuffling of eggs was making me nervous. Each day I am a little less confident that the eggs I bring inside are freshly laid and chickless. I decided to intervene.

I made a new nest for Whitney in a cat litter box inside a dog crate. I filled it with clean shavings, some fresh water and food, then carefully pulled the eggs out from under her and placed them in the box. I threw in two new eggs from another nest for good measure and finally lifted Whitney out of her nest, into the box and carried the whole thing into the barn. Holding my breath.

No go. The move woke her from her trance and she became visibly agitated, the way they do when they get separated from their flock. Fine. I moved the whole crate back out to the pen and placed it so she could see her friends. They crowded around and agitated some more. She still failed to settle. Instead she perched on the edge of the litter box and looked anxious.

I left her like that and went to clean out the coop. I hoped she'd resume her duties. A few minutes into cleaning I heard a loud pop. I thought Whitney must have sat down hard on the eggs and broken one. Um, no. She cracked it with her beak. On purpose. Yeah. And then ate it. It was not one of the fresh eggs. It was slightly rotten. Yuck. Pretty sure it had a bit of chickstuff in it too.

My first instinct was to throw the guilty party back in the pen with the rest of the hens and dump the whole lot of eggs. Curiosity got the better of me. I decided to wait and see what she did next. She had plenty of eggs. She could eat some and hatch some and probably still have a couple left over. She finished the first egg, but still wouldn't settle down.

After an hour or so of watching her pace around in the crate with no trace of broodiness left, I  gave up and decided to let her out to rejoin her friends. I opened her door expecting her to head out into the pen. Instead, she hightailed it straight to the coop and the now empty nest. In she crawled. Ugh. Apparently evolution told her to stick with the nest, not the eggs.

Maybe that strategy works in the wild, but in the barnyard, it's a bit of a problem.

In the end, I nailed an old screen across the front of her nest inside the small coop. At least it will keep the other hens and the rooster from harassing her, pushing her off the nest, or stealing the eggs.


I put food and water in with her. Maybe she'll be content to eat the food and not the eggs. Maybe not. I'll give her a couple of days. If she stays broody and eats and drinks what I provide, I'll let her sit it out another three weeks.

I had no idea having a broody hen was so tricky.


                                                                             

Will they or won't they?

Nineteen evenings ago, or thereabouts, I went to close up the chicken coop like I have every evening for the past year and half. Just outside the coop, I startled a raccoon, who ran off around the garage.  I peaked inside the little shed to count the tails crowded together on the roost, as I always do. Dusk was past and dark was looming so it was a little hard to tell where one hen stopped and the next started on the crowded roost, but I was pretty sure I was one hen short.

Finally I spied, down in the farthest nest box, next to the small chicken door, the protruding tail of one white hen. None of my hens have ever slept in a nest box, so this concerned me. It was Whitney (as in the mountain, not the singer). She was far enough into the shed that I couldn't reach her without crawling over the sleepers on the roost, so I poked at her a bit with a long stick. Nothing. I thought either she'd already descended into her nighttime coma, or she was dead, our first raccoon victim. I decided to hope for coma and come back in the morning. So, I was surprised to find this the next morning. Not so much a coma as a stupor. A broody stupor.

Whitney is some sort of Leghorn cross, bred for production. I was led to believe that this breed rarely goes broody. Nonetheless there she sat, fluffed up, glassy-eyed, and clucking softly to a large clutch of eggs. And so she's remained for nearly three weeks now. As incubation goes it seems a long comedy of errors to me, unlikely to produce any chicks. The number of eggs under her seemed to vary at first, sometimes more, sometimes less. I couldn't figure it out until a more experienced friend told me to mark the existing eggs. Theoretically, this would help me know when to call time on the whole process and avoid letting Whitney spend the whole summer waiting for eggs to hatch. I did catch Diablo and Shasta (more mountains) adding new eggs to the nest a couple of times when Whitney took her midday breaks. But more strangely, once the original eggs were marked so that I could recognize them, I started finding them in neighboring boxes. I never have seen the deeds that led to this arrangement. Maybe Whitney rejected them and another hen claimed them. Maybe some hens flat out stole them for themselves. No idea. I've tried to remove any new eggs laid since the marking, but I haven't taken the rejected eggs. I'm not sure what to do with them. I don't know how long they were incubated or how developed they were before they were cast out.


I also am not sure how many eggs remain under Whitney.

What I do know is that day 21 is coming up and I will be on the look out for chicks.