Broody Hen Thread!

[darkbluespace]

Katie is one happy little girl. She didn't get to see much but he poked his head out from Agatha's wing and I snapped this just as she looked up at me and said, "Oh, I saw him!" She named him 'Scout' because a friend on another forum said this one must be the scout the others sent out to check things out. She loved that, and decided to name him that because it's good for a boy or a girl. Still waiting on the others,, and will wait for a few more days.

So cute!! She looks so much like you!
So glad you got a chick!!

I hope you get a few more!

 

[jajeanpierre]

Katie is one happy little girl. She didn't get to see much but he poked his head out from Agatha's wing and I snapped this just as she looked up at me and said, "Oh, I saw him!" She named him 'Scout' because a friend on another forum said this one must be the scout the others sent out to check things out. She loved that, and decided to name him that because it's good for a boy or a girl. Still waiting on the others,, and will wait for a few more days.

Gosh, does she ever look like Gramma!

 

[Angie16hearts]

Katie is one happy little girl. She didn't get to see much but he poked his head out from Agatha's wing and I snapped this just as she looked up at me and said, "Oh, I saw him!" She named him 'Scout' because a friend on another forum said this one must be the scout the others sent out to check things out. She loved that, and decided to name him that because it's good for a boy or a girl. Still waiting on the others,, and will wait for a few more days.

how special ! I can't wait tell I get a broody and let boys watch the process ! Congrats!

 

[Angie16hearts]

So 6 weeks ago my Old Game, welsummer mix. I think really not to sure what she is. Anyways pepper started laying for a few weeks then decided she may go broody. So I gave her almost two weeks. 8 eggs 2 golf balls. She couldn't make up her mind. Beck and forth. She would sit for a bit then go play. So I pulled her clutch due to heat and didn't want anything rotting. It will be 6 weeks tomorrow and she has not laid a egg since. Her BFF died that same week. I feed her the best if the best! Will it be much longer before she lays? She is not molting she's all groomed and soft . Thanks for advice in advance!!!

Anyone have any thoughts ? I'm baffled after so long ! No eggs at all!

 

[Blooie]

So cute!! She looks so much like you!
So glad you got a chick!!

I hope you get a few more!

Gosh, does she ever look like Gramma!

I hear that all of the time....and yet I don't see it. But I thank you, and I'm flattered! When I give her a hug I tell her, "You are Gramma's heart." So I did that one day and she came back with, "And you're my gizzard!" There's a compliment buried in there somewhere!

Thanks, everyone for the support and sharing my worries and my excitement. I need to relax for a couple of days and just wait to see if there's going to be anymore besides Scout. I'm kicking myself in the hiney because the halves of Scout's shells were still in the nest and I pulled them out...the other girls snatched them up quick and those shells disappeared. I didn't even think to notice what color that shell was - some of the eggs are blue and some are green and I don't know which color this chick came from.

 

[Angie16hearts]

A little off topic...


Oh, Blooie, do I know the challenges of autism.

My eldest was your classic Aspie kid and just a horror to raise.  He's turned out to be a wonderful, good, kind person.  He works at Google, so he is right at home with all the other autistic computer geeks. 

Keep in mind that autistic-spectrum disorders are developmental disorders.  Early intense intervention can teach these kids those social skills they lack or don't develop at the age-appropriate time.  Because they are often so odd, their peers will shun them and often bully them.  That shunning means they don't get to practice social skills so the gap between the social skills of their "normal" peers' and their own skills widens as they get older.  Puberty can be a challenge.  As they get older and more self-aware they can start to look into their own behavior and effect a change if they are motivated to change and grow.  Your granddaughter appears to be quite self aware since she is identifying those "clinkers" after the fact.  Her challenge will be to identify them before they happen and do something about it so they don't happen.  She's a lucky girl because it looks like she has had the support she needs and the innate nature to accept the challenges she is facing.   Kudos to her family.  Aspie kids just break my heart because they can be so challenging to parent and it really takes a village to raise them.  Lots of these kids don't have the support of their "village" or their parents.  Bad parenting happens to normal kids and to special needs kids.  Society in general can be cruel to these kids and their parents.

My eldest's goal is to be indistinguishable from a "normal" person.  He is a very friendly and social person and wants social interaction with people.  He is motivated to fit in with society.  It sounds like your granddaughter is the same.  Some adult Aspies I've met don't care one bit about anyone else's feelings or fitting in with society.  I don't know what they were like as kids, or if this antisocial attitude is a defense to the horrors of not fitting in to a society that didn't accept mental illness (which autism is NOT) or any other handicaps.

When my eldest was diagnosed and I read what little literature there was available at the time (I'm talking 1996 when Aspergers was first identified by the mental health community as a syndrome on the autistic spectrum) I realized my husband was also an Aspie.  He was an odd person, but his hyperaccusis never went away.  He lives in ear plugs.  He has his quirks, but continues to develop more "normal" social skills.


If your eggs are shipped eggs, they will have a pretty low hatch rate.  Many shipped eggs never hatch and it is nothing you did.  The one thing I've found with my Aspie family is that you can be incredibly blunt with them and their feelings often aren't hurt the way a "normal" person's would be.  They don't do subtleties well because being subtle is ambiguous.  I've found I needed to spell everything out for them and that would mean to be very clear about the prospects of these eggs.   Good luck with your granddaughter.

Very sweet!

 

[calichicken]

@jajeanpierre and @Blooie ! I have enjoyed reading your posts! I am an early childhood special education teacher and appreciate the great support families provide for my students! YES...early intervention and plenty of opportunity is so important in developing those social skills that are challenging to kiddos on the spectrum. You both sound like AMAZING support to the kiddos(and now adults) in your family so KUDDOS to you...makes my heart smile

Congrats on your first little chick

and hers to hoping for a few more

 

[Blooie]

***Off topic warning***Feel Free to Skip***

Thank you for your kind words, calichicken. I read JaJeanpierre's post about her experiences and the first thing I thought was how much I'd love to sit down with her over a cup of coffee and just visit.

We started working with Katie when she was 13 months old. We knew something was wrong and that she seemed to be delayed, but experts tend to delay diagnoses (I hate that word when it's related to a little one) until they are older. We got lucky and found Children's Resource Center in Lovell, Wyoming and dived in. Some of the things they worry about didn't seem like that big a deal to me. Eye contact, for instance. I'm 64 and I find it hard to look into someone's eyes when I'm speaking to them. I stuttered badly as a child and my stepdad told me once that what I had to say was important to him but he didn't want me to ever feel uncomfortable talking to him because of the difficulty I had getting a point across. He suggested, when I had something really important I wanted to share, that I write it down. He promised if I wrote it, he would read it. I did - and he did. The stuttering made me avoid eye contact because I didn't want to see the frustration on the faces of the people I was trying to talk to. Katie's therapists had all kinds of ideas about how to get her to make that all important eye contact. None of them were working. I was her day care provider while her folks worked, so I had her most of the day. One day we were playing with her Dora the Explorer Colorforms and I had an idea. I stuck a small Dora figure on my glasses and when she wanted something I gently suggested that she "ask Dora". It worked. Granted she was actually looking at the Dora on my glasses and not into my eyes but it was close enough. Now CRC uses that method with the other kids they work with.

It's sometimes very hard to "deal with" these special kids unless you can love them enough to be willing to look at the world the way they see it and adapt. Then you can gradually morph that into what's more socially accepted. It's never as easy as that sounds unless you know how much potential is inside that little head. Katie is an artist and she's fantastic. I have 2 pieces of art she's done that are framed in my living room. They are of places that she loves - Artist's Point in Yellowstone was one she did when she was 4 years old and it was completely from her memory of going with me and Grampa....she had no photo in front of her when she painted it. The second is Grand Teton National Park done more recently and again it was strictly from memory.

Since I first started posting about Katie's involvement with our chickens so many great people with special needs kids have shared their journeys. Granted it temporarily hijacks a thread but we get back to chickens sooner or later.

In Katie's case she is such an integral part of our chicken raising that we almost can't talk about one without the other creeping in. So my apologies to those who might be irritated with Katie this and Katie that....but as long as I have chickens in the backyard and Katie and Kendra across the street (Kendra is 3 and has Spina Bifida) the conversations will always be blended.

 

[jajeanpierre]

***Off topic warning***Feel Free to Skip***

Thank you for your kind words, calichicken. I read JaJeanpierre's post about her experiences and the first thing I thought was how much I'd love to sit down with her over a cup of coffee and just visit.

We started working with Katie when she was 13 months old. We knew something was wrong and that she seemed to be delayed, but experts tend to delay diagnoses (I hate that word when it's related to a little one) until they are older. We got lucky and found Children's Resource Center in Lovell, Wyoming and dived in. Some of the things they worry about didn't seem like that big a deal to me. Eye contact, for instance. I'm 64 and I find it hard to look into someone's eyes when I'm speaking to them. I stuttered badly as a child and my stepdad told me once that what I had to say was important to him but he didn't want me to ever feel uncomfortable talking to him because of the difficulty I had getting a point across. He suggested, when I had something really important I wanted to share, that I write it down. He promised if I wrote it, he would read it. I did - and he did. The stuttering made me avoid eye contact because I didn't want to see the frustration on the faces of the people I was trying to talk to. Katie's therapists had all kinds of ideas about how to get her to make that all important eye contact. None of them were working. I was her day care provider while her folks worked, so I had her most of the day. One day we were playing with her Dora the Explorer Colorforms and I had an idea. I stuck a small Dora figure on my glasses and when she wanted something I gently suggested that she "ask Dora". It worked. Granted she was actually looking at the Dora on my glasses and not into my eyes but it was close enough. Now CRC uses that method with the other kids they work with.

It's sometimes very hard to "deal with" these special kids unless you can love them enough to be willing to look at the world the way they see it and adapt. Then you can gradually morph that into what's more socially accepted. It's never as easy as that sounds unless you know how much potential is inside that little head. Katie is an artist and she's fantastic. I have 2 pieces of art she's done that are framed in my living room. They are of places that she loves - Artist's Point in Yellowstone was one she did when she was 4 years old and it was completely from her memory of going with me and Grampa....she had no photo in front of her when she painted it. The second is Grand Teton National Park done more recently and again it was strictly from memory.

Since I first started posting about Katie's involvement with our chickens so many great people with special needs kids have shared their journeys. Granted it temporarily hijacks a thread but we get back to chickens sooner or later.

In Katie's case she is such an integral part of our chicken raising that we almost can't talk about one without the other creeping in. So my apologies to those who might be irritated with Katie this and Katie that....but as long as I have chickens in the backyard and Katie and Kendra across the street (Kendra is 3 and has Spina Bifida) the conversations will always be blended.

I'm glad I've been of some help. Normally, I would take this off list and correspond with you privately, but I am too much of an advocate for these kids and their parents. They and their caregivers need the rest of society to understand some of the extreme difficulties these kids and their families face. So, feel free to skip my ramblings. I just hope I don't get an email from a moderator reprimanding me for straying so far off topic....

Blooie, as Katie gets older, society will be less forgiving. It is one thing to have a 4-year-old have a melt down in public; a 9-year-old having a melt down elicits societal censor of the child and the family.

If eye contact is a big deal with her therapists, maybe you could teach her to look at lips. She will still be looking at faces and I don't think anyone will know the difference. I was deaf as a toddler from a measles infection and my hearing in the mid-range (human speech) has some deficits. I have never looked at people's eyes when they talk, instead looking at their mouths so I could lip read. I was about 50 before I realized that I needed to lip read to "hear" when an ear specialist pointed it out to me. I was completely unaware of why I didn't look in people's eyes.

 

[Rhandi74]

Katie is one happy little girl. She didn't get to see much but he poked his head out from Agatha's wing and I snapped this just as she looked up at me and said, "Oh, I saw him!" She named him 'Scout' because a friend on another forum said this one must be the scout the others sent out to check things out. She loved that, and decided to name him that because it's good for a boy or a girl. Still waiting on the others,, and will wait for a few more days.

Congrats!!! I am so happy for you all!!! Katie is beaming with joy. I just love this picture and what a great outcome.