D'uccle Thread

[chicknfun]

I have this sweet little Mille Fleur hen that the whole family totally adores. Her name is My Little Chickadee. Everyday she is the first to run and greet the approaching humans, sweet little chicken. She is right about one full year old, and I have not seen any tiny eggs yet. She is in a large coop/run area with 16 other chickens of different breeds and sizes. All the other hens are either EE's or W. Leghorns, and have been laying for months.
Is it odd that she has not yet produced any eggs?
I try to keep a good eye on the run area to see if she is just not using the nest boxes, but it is hard for me to get into the run area to check the space that I cannot see, behind the coop....im getting older, and my knees don't want to allow me to crouch and then get up again...LOL (this run area is only about 3 and a half feet tall.)
There's 8 nest boxes in that coop, and only 3 are used by the rest of the hens. I had thought that maybe the boxes were too high, but she roosts on the poles at night which are slightly higher than the lower row of nest boxes, so that's not it.....
Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

My EE took an entire year before starting to lay, so you can have late developers.

My roos just sound like squeaky toys, not really loud, but often and funny.

 

[JulieNKC]

My rooster crows a lot too. Even the girls, they just like to chatter a lot in general I think, lol. They are small enough they aren't very loud though.

 

[SIMZ]

Our two roosters are pretty loud and frequent crowers. We do have other roosters, so that might encourage them to crow more. Maybe just one would be better. To give you an idea, my daughter feels that one of our d'Uccles is a great candidate for the crowing contest at the fair!

 

[chicknfun]

My EE took an entire year before starting to lay, so you can have late developers.

My roos just sound like squeaky toys, not really loud, but often and funny.

That reminds me of my little G Sebright roo....seems to me he thinks he has to stretch his neck out while crowing as far as possible....I think he feels like a bigger chicken...LOL

 

[chicknfun]

OMG, This little chicken is trying to make me look stupid.....

I went out a few minutes ago, after DH came home, and there, in the darkest corner of the coop floor under the nest boxes was

.....yeah, you guessed it.....an egg like none I have seen before....actually 2. I would have never seen them if one of the leghorn girls had not thought that area was a new nest box

and laid her egg there. They were partially covered by dirt and pine shavings. The big egg on top.

Hmmm- maybe the leghorn was trying to alert me

Oh well, no matter, She must have taken the talk I had with her to heart.....

 

[Phoenix Farms]

My little Mille Roos are noisy but terrible crowers. And my Booted hen finally laid an egg! Turns out its been her laying all along!

 

[JulieNKC]

Still waiting for my first egg from my trio. They are 30 weeks old, so any day now would be nice, lol. I had an EE that didn't start laying until about 38 weeks, I'm hoping they aren't trying to follow her example.

 

[CGinJCMO]

I think I have one hatch this July, start laying this week. Not sure who since combs are all starting to get nice and red. I had three eggs in the coop one day...I assume the two older girls did two of the eggs so one of the eggs had to come from the younger ones.

Just had my only self blue pullet die for no apparent reason. Found her this morning dead by the coop door - seemed fine yesterday. She was one of the two older girls but wasn't a year old so not "old". Hopefully, don't have anything going around in my flock.

CG

 

[nothingbutbirds]

does anyone else think that faverolles would be good in d'uccle breeding for new colors?I think they have 5 toes though which is a dominant trait so it would be harder to get rid of.Do the vultur hocks disapear easily?I have never crossed my d'uccles with any other breed.