Laying eggs and squawking

[milleryardchx]

Regarding the broody I got her from a different farm about 4 days ago where they had a rooster but I don't know if she was around him but if she is acting broody that means she has been breed? I'm new to the whole chicken thing so I don't know what I'm doing to know if she is really brooding or not. But I was cooking some eggs yesterday and I pick up the eggs with in an hour of being laid but one had a little red in it so was that one fertilized?

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This is perfectly normal. Mine take it a step further and try to lay eggs on top of one another.

To encourage laying in both nestboxes, try placing the equal amount of golfballs or fake/wooden eggs in each nest box. They'll see the wooden egg or golfball and think another hen has already layed an egg there and it is deemed "exceptable" to lay their egg there as well.

As for the broody part. Best thing to do with a broody hen is to place her in her own area. I keep my broodies in a medium sized plastic dog crate inside our coop/run. This allows the hen to have the comfort of being near her companions but also the privacy a broody desires. Not seperating a broody, lets the other hens to continually lay in the clutch she is sitting on. Therefore embryos begin developing at different times, leading to a "scattered hatch"(all eggs don't hatch same day). Scattered hatches do not do well and are often messy and heartbreaking. So, best thing to do is seperate any broodies and not use a community nestbox(unless you can keep the others out of it).

-Kim

 

[arlee453]

Milleryard...

Broody means they want to (have to) sit on their eggs. It's totally triggered by hormones, not whether or not she has even been near a rooster, or even has a clutch of eggs to sit on. Some breed are more prone to go broody than others (silkies vs leghorns, etc)

A broody hen won't leave the nest - will hiss and spit at you if you disturb her. Not just for a brief time, but all day long. You can't get her off the nest or if you do, she'll run right back in there. She's ready to sit on her eggs, come H*^&& or high water.

Also, a red spot in the egg is just a blood/meat spot. It doesn't mean the egg is fertile or not fertile it's just something that happens sometimes. As the ova is released from the ovary at the beginning of the egg production process, a bit of tissue or blood is released as well, and that gets encapsulated by the rest of the egg. It's fine to eat, although a lot of us pick that bit out when cooking eggs just for the appearance of it. A blood or meat spot will not change the flavor or 'safety' of the egg at all - it's just not so attractive and so eggs with meat spots are usually taken out of the production line before they reach the supermarket. The big egg producers have machines that candle each egg and look for dark spots and those eggs are removed and used for other purposes than table eggs. Used to be much more common to find meat spots in market eggs. Now, with the automatic candling, it's very rare that one of those eggs gets to the supermarket, so people freak out when they see it sometimes. Same for double yolks as well - those are a pretty rare find in supermarket eggs as they are also 'culled' from the table egg line and used for other purposes like prepared restaurant eggs, food industry etc.

A fertile egg will have a bullseye around the actual ova that is on the surface of the yolk. There are several threads here that show pics of fertile vs non-fertile. Most people would not be able to tell from appearance if an egg is fertile or not.

And, even those that know what to look for can be wrong - it's hard to see. The only sure fire way to know if your eggs are fertile is to incubate them to around 7-10 days and then candle and look for veining.

Hope this helps!