- Mar 7, 2013
- 15
- 0
- 22
Posted this late at night and am not sure anyone saw it. Anyone have any ideas for me?
Hi all,
Am super new to this whole chicken raising awesomeness, and thus have some beginner questions for all you experts!
1 - Our hens seem to have quite suddenly decreased their laying. We have six hens and a rooster. Our birds are just shy of 9 months old and we tend to get anywhere between 4 - 6 eggs a day, most days. They are out all day, every day so I just assumed they found a new place to lay and we couldn't find it. But today we kept them inside for most of the day and still only got one egg. All this time too, we have continued to get 1 - 2 eggs in the nest boxes each day. Oddly enough, our rooster (who we thought we were going to have to get rid of) has almost completely stopped crowing. He crows 2-3 times/day max now. This is in stark contrast from his usual, albeit sporadic crowing sessions. Our 7 birds are given 2+ cups of feed each day, have a 1/4 of an acre of grass and brambles and trees to scratch around and explore, and receive a ton of kitchen scraps (sour raw milk, whey, cabbage, kale and chard stems, etc etc etc). Do you all think they might be calcium deficient? In the past we had oyster shell and grit out for them, but have been lax in making it available as of late. Besides the seemingly overnight decrease in egg production and lack of crowing, our birds seem to be happy and healthy. I have put out a bunch of oyster shells and grit, but am curious if you all think anything else might be up?
2 - Totally unrelated. On a whim, and since we have a rooster, we decided to try to hatch a couple of our eggs as we would like to more or less double our flock. 18 eggs to be exact. All with our cuckoo maran rooster and our hens (ameraucana, rhode island red, gold laced wyandotte, buff orpington, barred rock, and dominique). It was 21 days yesterday and to date almost all of our brown eggs have hatched (9/11), but only 1 of the green eggs - the amerucana x cuckoo maran cross, have hatched (1/7). Any ideas? I have seen mention of a lethal gene with amerucana's - could that be to blame here? Also how much longer do you all think we should incubate the eggs that haven't hatched?
Thanks so much! I appreciate any and all advice. I have attached a couple photos of the new babies. At the time they were still in the incubator, so they are not the greatest quality.
The incubator set up. It is a friend's and she said she had never seen condensation like that. Could that have been a problem? It appeared post-hatching though ...
Hatching is hard work!
But not so hard, apparently, that you can't get up to cheer your brother / sister on!
Hi all,
Am super new to this whole chicken raising awesomeness, and thus have some beginner questions for all you experts!
1 - Our hens seem to have quite suddenly decreased their laying. We have six hens and a rooster. Our birds are just shy of 9 months old and we tend to get anywhere between 4 - 6 eggs a day, most days. They are out all day, every day so I just assumed they found a new place to lay and we couldn't find it. But today we kept them inside for most of the day and still only got one egg. All this time too, we have continued to get 1 - 2 eggs in the nest boxes each day. Oddly enough, our rooster (who we thought we were going to have to get rid of) has almost completely stopped crowing. He crows 2-3 times/day max now. This is in stark contrast from his usual, albeit sporadic crowing sessions. Our 7 birds are given 2+ cups of feed each day, have a 1/4 of an acre of grass and brambles and trees to scratch around and explore, and receive a ton of kitchen scraps (sour raw milk, whey, cabbage, kale and chard stems, etc etc etc). Do you all think they might be calcium deficient? In the past we had oyster shell and grit out for them, but have been lax in making it available as of late. Besides the seemingly overnight decrease in egg production and lack of crowing, our birds seem to be happy and healthy. I have put out a bunch of oyster shells and grit, but am curious if you all think anything else might be up?
2 - Totally unrelated. On a whim, and since we have a rooster, we decided to try to hatch a couple of our eggs as we would like to more or less double our flock. 18 eggs to be exact. All with our cuckoo maran rooster and our hens (ameraucana, rhode island red, gold laced wyandotte, buff orpington, barred rock, and dominique). It was 21 days yesterday and to date almost all of our brown eggs have hatched (9/11), but only 1 of the green eggs - the amerucana x cuckoo maran cross, have hatched (1/7). Any ideas? I have seen mention of a lethal gene with amerucana's - could that be to blame here? Also how much longer do you all think we should incubate the eggs that haven't hatched?
Thanks so much! I appreciate any and all advice. I have attached a couple photos of the new babies. At the time they were still in the incubator, so they are not the greatest quality.
The incubator set up. It is a friend's and she said she had never seen condensation like that. Could that have been a problem? It appeared post-hatching though ...
Hatching is hard work!
But not so hard, apparently, that you can't get up to cheer your brother / sister on!