You have such a nice place, Kathy. Nice birds, too!
Thanks to Robin (wekiva bird) for the sweet phone call to check up on me and tell me that Ike is a grandfather! Yea!
Nugget seems to be trying to snap out of it after smushing her poor chick. I let Suede, Meg and Hope out of the pen and opened Nugget's broody cage door. She'd already been out for her morning "eat, poop, dustbathe" ritual and gone back, so she knew there was no egg on the nest--we always have to pull her off the nest or she will stay on for days, not good in the heat.
When I let out her coop-mates, she actually came off the nest on her own, still clucking and flared up. I mashed up a few boiled eggs on a plate and took them out to Suede. She ate them, something she had refused the entire three week period-Nugget only eats scratch grains during her broody times and it works well to keep her poop solid, so she really knows what she's doing, but this afternoon, she ate the eggs. When I threw some scratch in their pen, she ran in there and was eating, kept eating when Suede and the girls returned so I closed the gate. She took a dustbath, even groomed Hope's beak a little, sat around, then for a short time, resumed clucking, but made no attempt to get out of the pen or go onto a nest in their coop. We'll see what happens at roost time tonight.
In the meantime, the nest is "re-made" and ready to move Dusty onto it so she is cooler than in the metal file cabinet nestbox in the Orp coop.
