- Jan 6, 2010
- 200
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My husband and I went out of town for our anniversary and came home to find not only one, but two of my silkies broody. These are my first broody birds and i wasn't really prepared to do the broody bird thing yet. Neither had eggs under them, as the people that were "chicken sitting" for me didn't realize they were broody and took the eggs. So after 4 days, I managed to gather enough eggs for the 2 of them to sit. The first challenge was getting them into their own nesting boxes, since they were sharing one. Well, got that done, but over the first 2 or 3 days, one of them just didn't want to stay on her nest and preferred crawling back into the other nest or just "sitting" on a pile of shavings...so not sure how well her eggs will do, since they were left for bits of time on end.
The next problem I've had is that another one of my silkies just started laying and I didn't realize that she was....so the same silly bird that was leaving her nest, decided to move all her eggs over to combine with the freshly laid egg from the other girl. After doing this a couple of times, I realized that I should have marked the eggs, becuase now I don't know whose are whose and they are all on different days. Any suggestions how to handle that? I thought about trying to candle and put the further developed eggs under one hen and the rest under another? If I could even tell...or wait until they start hatching and place all the pipped eggs under one bird? I dunno.....
Problem number 2...I went out yesterday to check on the birds and when I lifted one of them up I noticed a few tiny tiny black bugs moving on my arms...I think they are mites? I've never seen them before or had any problem with any sort of infestation...I immediately dusted with Permethrin since that was all I had on hand. Then panicked afterward hoping that was okay to dust a broody?
And one last question...can you continue eating eggs after using permethrin? not sure if I should be throwing the eggs out from the other birds or if they are okay.
Can't believe I've made such a muck of this! I guess I didn't realize that there was so much to learn with a broody! I thought they sort of took care of it all on their own
.Thanks so much for any ideas!
The next problem I've had is that another one of my silkies just started laying and I didn't realize that she was....so the same silly bird that was leaving her nest, decided to move all her eggs over to combine with the freshly laid egg from the other girl. After doing this a couple of times, I realized that I should have marked the eggs, becuase now I don't know whose are whose and they are all on different days. Any suggestions how to handle that? I thought about trying to candle and put the further developed eggs under one hen and the rest under another? If I could even tell...or wait until they start hatching and place all the pipped eggs under one bird? I dunno.....
Problem number 2...I went out yesterday to check on the birds and when I lifted one of them up I noticed a few tiny tiny black bugs moving on my arms...I think they are mites? I've never seen them before or had any problem with any sort of infestation...I immediately dusted with Permethrin since that was all I had on hand. Then panicked afterward hoping that was okay to dust a broody?
And one last question...can you continue eating eggs after using permethrin? not sure if I should be throwing the eggs out from the other birds or if they are okay.
Can't believe I've made such a muck of this! I guess I didn't realize that there was so much to learn with a broody! I thought they sort of took care of it all on their own
