Egg Song! Glorious Egg Song!

[JensChickies]

Woo hoo!!!! My first hen used to sing it after every egg, and now she never does. She's 3 and stopped singing about a year and a half ago. My 2 year old sings occasionally.

 

[Bugseye]

Yup, the microwave cleaning should last a while after the egg eruption and some charred beets this week. Hah! Those girls have everything and more: organic feed, fermented feed, grit, oyster shells, leftovers, lawn grazing some days and more, with mealworms on the way from my Rubbermaid farm. I'd like to take them into the garden when I'm there and am waiting until they settle down more. Can't leave them alone there cuz of predators of the winged type. The other girls should take to laying soon.

 

[SixChickFlock]

I received my first three eggs in three days... Then nothing on the 5th and a 4th egg on the 6th. It was pretty noisy all night long in Chicago.

 

[Rockythgr81]

I received my first three eggs in three days... Then nothing on the 5th and a 4th egg on the 6th. It was pretty noisy all night long in Chicago.

Yup, unusual stress, does effect egg production. Any change made is stressful to them. I have seen reduction in egg production for such little things as changing from a white light to a red light. Chickens are definitely creatures of habit, but they will recover. I try to keep changes in their lives small. That being said, I will be moving them to the new coop hopefully by the end of this week.

 

[fleamarketfred]

Got my first eggs this weekend. I was just as happy. The neatest thing to hear is they're egg song

 

[Concrete101]

My neighbors (3) chichens sing the song every day. Mine are not quite there yet.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

My neighbors (3) chichens sing the song every day. Mine are not quite there yet.

that's how it is here too. I hear my neighbors hens proudly proclaiming their eggs. I'm still impatiently waiting to hear it from mine lol

 

[MarcoPollo]

Yay!!! We got our first egg today! It was so hot, my poor hen! No egg song though. She was completely quiet!

Congrats!
I feel bad for them too when I see them trying to stay in the nest box on a hot day, but they always manage to get through it.

 

[SixChickFlock]

OK, I have question.

I got my first egg on Wednesday, another Thursday and Friday, all after 4pm and all in a back corner of the coop... Then nothing on Saturday, July 5th. Sunday, I found one in the morning, but in a nest box near that back corner of the coop. Today I got number 5, in the same nest box and also in the morning, AND I finally saw a hen (Astrid/Buff Orp) in the nest box before she laid. No song for any of these eggs. And... she is not one of the two that are squatting (first Minty/Black Austrolorp, then Florence/Silver laced Wyandotte) and have bright red combs and wattles! Could she have been laying all along? I've scoured the yard looking for free range nests but nothing so far.

Could Astrid have been laying all along while I thought it was Minty? Could more than one hen be laying and no one is laying everyday? All the eggs look to be the same color, and each day they grow by half a gram or so. The first one was the smallest and had a few bumps, as you sometimes find.

Anyway, I'll just keep logging in eggs and see what happens. What would any of you guess is going on?

 

[Rekon]

SixChick, I would guess that, if Astrid isn't laying, she may be sitting on someone else's egg. We have hens that do that.

I love the egg song. Our Russian Orloff hens lay just about every day, and never sang it... until we got them a rooster. Now not only do they sing it, but the Russian Orloff rooster and our Serama rooster sing it with them.

People were asking about whether other birds sing an egg song. We also keep two kinds of quail and peafowl, and none of them sing egg songs, at least, not when we're around! Someone also wondered about hens sharing nest boxes, and I have a theory. These are flocking birds. If they share nests, when somebody goes broody, they'll be mothering more than one hen's chicks. Our broody Silkie cares for the Orloff and Serama eggs I give her. Our peahens seem to do the same; only one of our peahens sits eggs, but they all seem to lay together until she starts sitting. It's a way to protect more of the hens, since they are most vulnerable when they sit a nest.