I built a small pen inside the coop/run and confined my broody in there. She has enough space for a bowl of food, water, poop, and dust bath. Broody hens don't need much space. The other hen can't access the broody's nest so I don't have to deal with sterile eggs on the broody nest. Once the one...
You should have left the bird where it was. If it made that far, it means the parents were feeding it. I also had one legged canaries that did perfectly fine with just one leg. If it died, then let it be. Predators and scavengers need to eat too. Sometimes for a wild animal it's better to die...
One of my hens can see me when I use the bathroom at 5 am and starts making those rubber chicken screams so loud that the sound comes out distorted. Because she wants to come out. She's worse than a rooster.
I had a couple of birds killed by snakes but I always gave the fault to myself, not the snake, for not making my coop safe enough. I'd rather have 100 rat snakes in my yard than 100 rats. Rat snakes eat mostly rats so they're always welcome in my property. And cats not only kill chickens but...
The breeder has one "araucana" hen with no tail but feathered feet. So that chick is probably hers.
He doesn't have legbars. He doesn't like that breed, so I got my legbar eggs shipped from a different breeder. The other breeds he currently has are cochin, padovana, cemani. However he tried...
I got some scrap Araucana eggs from a breeder to test an incubator I was trying to fix.
The eggs were all the same size and all the same hue of blue.
However I got these 2 chicks that have a tail. They are 2 and half weeks old. I think the light one is a male and the dark one is a pullet. What...
If the air sac is small, I would wait. Last time I hatched I upped the humidity only after the first pip (first pip day 18) and I had no shrink wrapping issues.
I would strongly advise to get a cheap incubator from Amazon.
I once made a cardboard + heating pad incubator for fermentation (yoghurt, dough) and it failed miserably because it couldn't hold enough heat. I can't imagine to incubate eggs that way, there are already so many things that goes...
1 yes
2 if they're not fertilized you remove them and wait for the developing ones to hatch. I strongly advise to never add new eggs to an already incubating batch, especially if you have a small incubator. It's asking for trouble.
I ate 2 infertile eggs that I incubated for 5 days. I used them for baking so there wasn't much to taste. The other 2 I hard boiled them and gave them to my chickens. They're not bad, but they aren't worth eating.
Buy incubators that hold at least 20 eggs or more. Smaller incubators are mostly...
Anyone know if hens that goes broody and hatch eggs live longer than hens that are not allowed to sit? Usually chickens that lay a lot end up with reproductive issues that greatly shorten their life, but if a hen is allowed to breed, she will take a break from egg laying. Do you think this might...
This hen decided to go broody for real.
She laid one egg a day for a week, which is unusual for the breed. Then she started the walking broody clucking again. She sat all day yesterday without eating or drinking, and this morning she's still sitting so I gave her a bunch of fertile eggs. We'll...