Old Fashioned Broody Hen Hatch A Long and Informational Thread

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rebrascora said:
I love my barn yard mixes from my first broody.  They are all her offspring and I fully expect the 6 pullets to go broody themselves sooner or later because they have a lot of natural instinct like her. They hatched 14th June and started laying a couple of months ago. I was so proud and thought I was doing well getting 2 or 3 little blue green eggs a day from them.... until a few days ago when I got the ladder out and checked their mother's old sneaky broody nest up in the eves and found a mountain of eggs! (43 to be precise).
I have since started poking around in other nooks and crannies and found two more secret nests, one with 5 eggs and the other with 15, all either Tasha, the broody's, or her daughters, so it looks like these young girls are much better layers than I could have hoped for, but are going to take after their mother for being sneaky about where they lay!.
I'm pleased to report that so far none of the eggs have been bad and I've eaten some of the oldest ones from the very bottom of the 43 egg mountain and they were yummy, so there will hopefully be no waste. The cats and chucks are also being treated to scrambled eggs on a regular basis to help me get through them, but if anyone has any good egg recipes.......??
I give most of my eggs away to friends and family but I wouldn't give anyone these as I can't be certain they are OK until I crack them. 63 eggs are a lot to use up pronto, plus the 7-8 others I am averaging daily. This started out as a hobby but has rapidly got out of control!!!

I only had two hens go broody last year and I'm already overrun. If they go broody again this year, which is pretty likely, plus some of Tasha's daughters too, I am going to end up being bankrupted by the feed bill if nothing else!

The funny thing is that I had set up nests for them in buildings other than the hen house where they had shown an interest in laying, thinking I was being clever. I get the odd egg or two in these nests and I assumed I had allowed them to fulfil their need to be sneaky and lay away, but still enable me to collect them easily. The joke was obviously on me! One of their real secret nests needed a ladder and a crawl board, one needed step ladders and the other required me to remove 3 steel farm gates and an old door which were being stored against the back wall of the hayshed. Can't decide whether to try to block access to these locations now and risk them finding somewhere that I don't know about and even less accessible or leave them access, which is probably easier, and check these nests once a week!
What cheeky little monkeys they are!!!
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Awesome! They are stinkers! My girls, when they first started laying, laid their eggs in a big basket next to our back door that was filled with hay. It was actually great! Just crack the door and reach out to get an egg!


700

700


This looks like a yummy recipe, and uses 8 eggs! A frittata is always good when you have a lot of eggs too.

http://www.onehundreddollarsamonth.com/recipe-dutch-breakfast-puff/



vpatt said:
She is very pretty and I love her name!
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Thanks!


ChickyChickens said:
X2!!!
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Thank you!


*edited to add pics.
 
Last edited:

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