- Mar 15, 2013
- 7
- 2
- 9
Hey BYC,
First post here. My girl Caroline is one of 5 hens we got as day old chicks from the feed store last march. 2 silkies, a buff orpington, an ameraucana and a cuckoo marans. All have long since grown and are happy as can be. The other 4 birds began laying last september and layed consistently until november, when they stopped. All 4 have again resumed laying within the last month. We're in north Texas so it's already 70s and 80s here, nice and sunny.
Let me tell you some details about Caroline, our cuckoo marans:
Growth: Caroline was a little bit of a late bloomer I think, in that her comb wasn't really full sized until the winter, when everyone had stopped laying. Now, her comb is full and the largest of the bunch. She is also the largest bird. Very plump, nice glossy feathers, behaves like all of the other girls do, minus the egg laying. She is definitely not a rooster though. She has molted a couple times already. She has never gone broody.
Habitat: She shares a coop with the other 4 girls, and all sleep side by side at night on the rail. Their run is 4ft x 8ft and covered from the harsh sun/rain. I work from home and my office faces the back yard so the girls all have free range of the entire back yard during daylight hours. At night I lock them in their coop and let them out again at dawn. I have checked the yard for other nests,eggs, etc. Nothing.
Food: Caroline eats everything the other girls do, and drinks the same amount of water. They love all the usual treats. The water is a nipple water system, very clean, with apple cider vinegar added.
Problems?: She does seem to be a bit different than some of the cuckoo marans I have seen online. She has feathered feet which leads me to believe she isn't from the best breeding (she was a feed store bird from a central TX hatchery). Additionally, the down feathers on her butt are very dense, and her poop always gets stuck on her feathers. We clean her periodically when it seems dense. Earlier today we cleaned off a particularly large clump of poop from her butt feathers. Once we put her back down and she got over her dizziness, she had a very large, diarrhea like poop. Very runny. Since then she seems to be back to normal, however.
2 weeks ago, I actually caught her in the nesting box! I thought that maybe this was finally her time to shine. I let her be, and saw her come out about an hour later. No egg. No nothing... no juices, no poop, nothing. She repeated the following day with the same results.
Caroline has never layed an egg. Never squatted (all the other girls will squat for me and let me scratch their backs). She has never done an egg-song and is generally very quiet.
Any guesses? She isn't a rooster and isn't ill I don't think. I keep hoping that she'll start laying but every day goes by she seems content to do everything the other girls do but lay.
First post here. My girl Caroline is one of 5 hens we got as day old chicks from the feed store last march. 2 silkies, a buff orpington, an ameraucana and a cuckoo marans. All have long since grown and are happy as can be. The other 4 birds began laying last september and layed consistently until november, when they stopped. All 4 have again resumed laying within the last month. We're in north Texas so it's already 70s and 80s here, nice and sunny.
Let me tell you some details about Caroline, our cuckoo marans:
Growth: Caroline was a little bit of a late bloomer I think, in that her comb wasn't really full sized until the winter, when everyone had stopped laying. Now, her comb is full and the largest of the bunch. She is also the largest bird. Very plump, nice glossy feathers, behaves like all of the other girls do, minus the egg laying. She is definitely not a rooster though. She has molted a couple times already. She has never gone broody.
Habitat: She shares a coop with the other 4 girls, and all sleep side by side at night on the rail. Their run is 4ft x 8ft and covered from the harsh sun/rain. I work from home and my office faces the back yard so the girls all have free range of the entire back yard during daylight hours. At night I lock them in their coop and let them out again at dawn. I have checked the yard for other nests,eggs, etc. Nothing.
Food: Caroline eats everything the other girls do, and drinks the same amount of water. They love all the usual treats. The water is a nipple water system, very clean, with apple cider vinegar added.
Problems?: She does seem to be a bit different than some of the cuckoo marans I have seen online. She has feathered feet which leads me to believe she isn't from the best breeding (she was a feed store bird from a central TX hatchery). Additionally, the down feathers on her butt are very dense, and her poop always gets stuck on her feathers. We clean her periodically when it seems dense. Earlier today we cleaned off a particularly large clump of poop from her butt feathers. Once we put her back down and she got over her dizziness, she had a very large, diarrhea like poop. Very runny. Since then she seems to be back to normal, however.
2 weeks ago, I actually caught her in the nesting box! I thought that maybe this was finally her time to shine. I let her be, and saw her come out about an hour later. No egg. No nothing... no juices, no poop, nothing. She repeated the following day with the same results.
Caroline has never layed an egg. Never squatted (all the other girls will squat for me and let me scratch their backs). She has never done an egg-song and is generally very quiet.
Any guesses? She isn't a rooster and isn't ill I don't think. I keep hoping that she'll start laying but every day goes by she seems content to do everything the other girls do but lay.
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