We have a chicken (one of the Barred Rocks) who isn't getting along too well--she doesn't seem sick, but she's got a hitch in her get-along, and it's freaking the others out enough that they've pecked away nearly half her comb. So, we put her in the semi-obvious place: the old rabbit hutch GranR had given us. Not 3 hours later, I looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard and found that the hutch had rotated 90 degrees. The theory is that the donkeys shoved it around in order to eat the grain I'd put in there. When DH gets a chance, he will move the hutch into Boudeaux's pen (I'll try to help, but I'm not the buff 19 I used to be).
Yesterday, while my husband was out checking the viability of said hutch move, he discovered a huge stash of eggs under one of our brush piles. Since we've no way of knowing how long they've been there, we can't sell them. And, color me wimpy, but I'm not brave enough to try using them ourselves. We've tried candling before, and we aren't very good at it (we lost 2 chicks that way). So, since we have a chicken that was isolated anyway (and I'll assume she has nothing better to do), I built a nest with shredded newspaper (hay is $8.50 a bale here, and too expensive to use for nesting), and moved the eggs in. There's 26, and I don't think she'll be able to hatch all of them, but we'll give it a try.
The lesson here is that I need to get out more, and scope out chicken-friendly egg-hiding places so this doesn't happen again.
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4 comments:
My dad had some free roaming hens on our 50 acres in PA and honestly we usually discovered the nest after we had stepped in it. After some foxes caught on to our roamers he had to limit their boundless excursions.
$8.50 a BALE!?!
And just yesterday I was second-guessing the $1.25 or so we paid for the bales that came with our hayloft.
Thank you for the reality check. Needed that.
I would be too chicken to try using the eggs, too.
maggie--we only have 11+ acres, but the hens don't really roam that far. They were stashing some in the hay shed, but I was able to keep up with those pretty well.
It was funny to watch them wander around in between rain showers yesterday--they still got pretty soaked.
jo--yep, $8.50 for a "square" bale. Such is life during DroughtTime. For $1.25, not only would we not worry about whether we could keep our boy sheep for their wool, but we'd expand the flock with ewes we could breed this fall. As it stands, we will probably be slaughtering Bucky a.k.a. Lands-On-Head and gifting the haggis-necessary ingredients to our son's godfather. That's a story I'll have to save for a real blog entry.
You're very welcome, I'm here to serve.
:D
For the hens, are there any farmers around with the last year's hay? When I moved in here, bales of old hay had been left (& useless silage) & I used that for the hens ~ they loved it. Rawnie Spangle opened the bales to get to the better hay in the middle which made getting hay for the hens much easier!
Not 1 of my incubating eggs hatched this time ~ am trying again, but no goose eggs this time as Goosey Lucy is sitting & not laying. Having laid brilliantly all through the winter, the ducks have dropped off with their egg production & something ate my 1 Black Silkie hen :(
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