Maine

[CoopChick719]

Jazor, I like LG's suggestion on dummy eggs with some type of color agent be it food dye or mustard. Just nothing red! You might be able to isolate the offenders.

 

[CoopChick719]

Thanks for the encouragement, CoopChick!  I remember when you were having trouble... I didn't realize it was 11.  That must have been just awful!
Thanks Izzy! I didn't realize it either until I stopped to think on it. Now I have added 5RIRs and am just not sure that I like their temperament. They've got the others picking at my smaller girls which they didn't do before! My dilemma is they are consistent egg layers!

 

[lazy gardener]

One of my EE appears to have respiratory issues. She started wheezing sometime this morning. Her respiration rate is around 45/min. She sounds like a wheezing bellows, however does not do it consistently. When she is scratching in the litter, or picking grains out of the litter, she makes no sound. I palpated her, and found her crop to be quite full, so massaged it first to help empty it down, and then tipped her upside down and massaged to see if she would regurgitate anything. Nothing came out. The crop is noticeably emptier, and she is now doing the dry sneeze, like they do when they get some dry food irritating their airways. She acts perfectly fine. Any advice? It doesn't seem logical to isolate her because she's been with the flock all along, and if she has anything contagious, they've all been exposed. Her eyes are clear, no discharge anywhere, she looks as fit as a fiddle. Her body is good and solid when I pick her up.

 

[ashandvine]

The new babies have arrived. I clearly woke them from their nap for this pic.




[Sorry Lg but I don't know quite what to say about your sneezing chicken. Give it a little time and see what happens I think. If she seems fine in all ways other than the rasping she might be fine. If she isn't rattling and gurgling don't worry too much yet.]

 

[lazy gardener]

Thanks Ash. I'm on the wait and see track. Going to go out to see how she sounds after she goes to roost. I'm just hoping that she got a millet seed or something stuck in her craw. It sounds like a repeated long low volume cluck. My biggest fear is that this might be something contagious that will keep me from getting chicks this spring.

 

[keesmom]

Anybody had any dealings with Duane Urch@Turnland Poultry? He's got all of the breeds I'm interested in, available as chicks or eggs. Anyone got hatching eggs from him? Good hatches? I'm not able to access him via e-mail. If anyone has a valid e-mail address, I'd love to have it. Thanks.

His email is [email protected]. Phone is 507-451-6782, between 6 and 9 pm CST only. He is an older gentleman and does prefer phone calls. You'll find out faster what is still available if you call. He does tend to sell out early. No online orders - by mail only.

If you are interested in rosecombed Mediterranean breeds Yellow House Farm in NH has nice RC Anconas.

 

[IZZYBELLA]

Thanks Ash. I'm on the wait and see track. Going to go out to see how she sounds after she goes to roost. I'm just hoping that she got a millet seed or something stuck in her craw. It sounds like a repeated long low volume cluck. My biggest fear is that this might be something contagious that will keep me from getting chicks this spring.

I think you're probably doing right to wait and see. I had one who dry sneezed for a 24-hr period (during which I of course panicked) and nothing ended up coming of it and nobody else seemed to catch it. Fingers crossed for her!

 

[lazy gardener]

She's continuing with her wheeze tonight while on the perch.

 

[lazy gardener]

Jazor, do you have fake eggs in the nest? I've heard one reader suggesting and having luck by minimally filing the translucent point off the offender's beak (of course, you'd have to know who that is) so the beaks are more sensitive. Do you have school age kids? School break this week, perhaps you could get the eggs gathered hourly, and have some observation going on to see if the offender(s) can be caught in the act.

 

[buckabucka]

Well I'm back with more questions and problems.  

Seems I've got egg eaters.  It's my own **** fault for taking too long to get their nest boxes ready.  I had subbed out the project to someone (prior to Christmas) and he said he could have them before the end of January.  He didn't/couldn't and the birds began laying in the coop.  Evidently they realized they could eat the eggs, and of course, wont stop.

Had some help from a fellow BYC'er Saturday and we built some excellent nesting boxes (photos to come when I'm not ready to butcher half my birds) and a new roost.  As we were building the boxes we already had birds going in and laying eggs in them.  Seemed great!  Now every time I check the coop (530am and 630pm) there are no eggs, but signs of a mess where they have eaten them. 

Long story short: I have egg eaters.  

Long question short: Should I put all of the offenders in the freezer?  Assuming I can even figure out the ones doing it.

I just read about this recently. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is said to work:
EGG EATING
This is from Secrets of Successful Poultry Keeping -1929
"The most popular and incidently most useless is the filling of eggs with some nauseous mixture........, it is much trouble and rarely succeeds. Filing the hen's beak is again seldom effective.......
There is however a cure, and a remarkably simple one. In each nest-box place eight or ten eggs marked with a cross and as often as they are eaten replace them with others. It is the old story of the child and the sweets. In a few days it will be found that the birds have had their fill of eggs and none are missing. Leave the eggs in the nests for a couple weeks when may be safely removed and no further trouble will ensue.
The cure may be considered an expensive one, but it is by no means so expensive as is the loss of the eggs day after day: and during the breeding season the unfertile eggs from the incubators come in handy for this purpose.

And from the
Encyclopeadia of Poultry JT Brown
Egg eating is a vicious habit, and .. is probable that the habit is frequently acquired in the first instance in consequence of bird producing shelless eggs, or dropping an egg from the perch when roosting; in either case, the hen or hens will naturally investigate as regards the character of the contents, and having once tasted an egg they want more-with disastrous results as regards the profitable aspect of egg production. Many poultry keepers, encourage this practice by giving their fowls broken egg shells, and having eaten primarily for the lime the birds experiment with whole eggs, and discover a pleasant food in addition to what they originally sought. If the poultryman always allows his fowls free access to a good supply of broken oyster-shell and fresh green food, although it will not of course prevent accidents, such as have been referred to, the free use of such food and material will largely prevent the predisposition of the birds to this or other vicious habits; and an additional precaution exists in the provision of a good range andsome incentive to constant activity. A busy hen is seldom vicious.

Lewis Wright's Book of Poultry (circa 1872)
Hens not infrequently acquire the pernicious habit of eating their eggs, sometimes perhaps from accidental breakages. Often such a habit may be cured by filling carefully emptied egg-shells with nauseous compounds, of a yellowish colour, like strong mustard, or carbolated vaseline. We have seen a hen eat the whole of a single mustard-filled egg without ruffling a feather; but generally if the plan is persevered with, and such prepared eggs regularly left in the nest and about the yard, the habit will be conquered. There is, however, a more certain plan, which we owe to the experience of American farmers, who often suffer far more largely in this way, owing to long close confinement during the winter. There is a very large agreement amongst these experienced breeders that the best, most certain, and in fact almost invariable cure for egg-eating is to give a free supply of either eggs or egg-shells for a few days! Some of them regularly save up their egg-shells for such contingencies, showing how common the trouble is under the conditions; others get them from trhe restaurants. At first the hens just go for them! And they are given the shells freely, for breakfast, dinner, supper. But soon the appetite palls; by the end of the second day they care little, and on the third, fresh eggs may be rolled about among them with impunity.The editor of one of the Ameican poultry journals states: "We have tried this plan for some years, and have never known it fail. We save up our egg-shells, and have a stock on hand for any pen of fowls that shows a tendency towards the egg-eating habit. This remedy has never failed us." Then a farmer writes: "Go to the bakery and get a basket of fresh egg-shells; give them to the hens as fresh as you can, and throw them in whole; don't dry them, or break them up, but give as fresh and whole as you can get them. Give them all they will eat, and throw in some more, and keep them before them all the time for a few days, and your hens will stop eating their eggs."Others report that they have given the entire eggs, using unfertile ones tested out of the incubators. " At first the hens would trample all over each other to get at the broken eggs, but before they got through, they wouldn't touch an egg." There is a whole pile of testimony to the success of this cure.

Another way of meeting the vice is to employ nests so constructed that the egg rolls away out of the hen's reach as soon as laid. The nest is inclined so that the egg rolls down it on to some straw. We found ourselves that hens refused to lay in a nest made exactly like this; but by making it of carpet, which sagged a little in the middle, and cementing a nest-egg or half a nest egg half-way on the carpet they would do so. Making the nests dark, as by placing them away from the wall and making the hens enter them by this dark passage from behind, the front towards the house being closed up, greatly prevents, and often checks egg-eating. But when it once occurs, the weight of American testimony inclines us to the egg or egg-shell cure.