Mine are a year and a half old Hatchery BA's from Cackle. I started with 5 but one died of liver prolapse related to fatty liver disease. None of mine have gone Broody, so now I have a Silver Gray Dorking to see if she will go broody.
The Egg eating like this is a natural behavior. The hen will check to see if the egg is hard enough and if it isn't she will eat it. Egg eating is rare. I thought I had some but after worming and extra calcium I haven't had any eaten in months. I also sneak them some granulated kelp. I get it from Azure Standard.
With Hatchery birds you should still get eggs from them for a couple more years. Most likely you will start losing them naturally so you may not have to retire too many of them. I watched a video on raising chickens and the person(she is on BYC from San Francisco) retired the hens at 2 years. She made soup out of them. I did lose a Golden Comet that was 21 months last month. She stopped laying last October. She had Mareks cancer. My Mom said I should have gotten rid of the free loader but she was too nice of a hen for that.
I will have to look up where you live in Oregon.
Bye,
Ron
Thanks a million for the tip on kelp! I will implement this immediately! I happen to have some.
We are located on the central coast, about a mile from the ocean, hence the super-mild temps during summer.
My first BA hatchery broody was broody after laying about 50 eggs, one a day til then. She was born to brood. I was sick to have lost her. My "Big Plan" to raise chooks shot down in flames.
But now, a second one has gone broody at 2 and a half. I have put golf balls in the nests to encourage the others.
One of my 1.5 y/os is "cluck clucking" but barely has enough feathers to keep herself warm, so I think she is just molting and being a weirdo.
I am happy to hear about the soft egg eating being normal. I am not happy about the loss of eggs when so few are laying. My husband, the big egg eater on this farm is not patient about not having his gorgeous brown eggs for breakfast.
Don't give up on the broodies. I put 2 plastic snap-together easter eggs (pink and purple polka dotted) into a nest and this is what got Tilda going, I think. I also added the additional golf balls to the nest Molly the egg eater likes to lay in, thinking if she pecks the golf balls and no yum yums come out, maybe she will get bored and stop.
Sorry about the loss of your hens. That is always so sad.
I am super-psyched about the new clutch. I meant to get replacement pullets (in the absense of a broody) this spring, but money was too tight, and I just couldn't swing it. They would be laying right now, so it is a big bummer for me. But, Mother Nature smiled on me, and I have another chance at a few pullets in the next clutch.
I process my own roos, so they will be coming around just in time for chicken and dumplings for winter. My luck with more pullets than roos has been atrocious. Last year I got 8 straight runs and ended up with 5 roos. But I did get my gorgeous Maximus from that lot, so it was worth it. When AliceAnn hatched her first clutch, I got 2 chicks, a pullet named Penelope and a roo, formerly known as Perseus. he had to be stewed because he and his father could not get along, and Perseus was beating the daylights out of Max.
Prior to that, Max had been a bit of a handfull, and he even wanted to challenge me a time or two. We had just gotten past that when Perseus became so aggressive. I made the decision to process the son, as I had already worked things out between me and the other roo, and didn't want to have to face it with another upstart.
It has been such a learning process with these chooks, but I love it and they are such a joy to me.
Thanks again for all the help!
