Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[BDutch]

More tax because...I like paying chicken tax. May also serve as payment for the next time I forget to pay. Lady Gaga, who is starting to want to mate with his pulletsView attachment 3606710

Change the name to mister or sir Gaga. ?

 

[fluffycrow]

Change the name to mister or sir Gaga. ?

The name is intentional, and he was named while I was aware of his...boy-ness. The theme was pop icons or whatever, and I like the dude so I had to come up with a good reference for a name, and I did find it

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Loving the tax! I'll have to get some of my own tomorrow.
Well, it seems 1 pullet has decided she is going to sit tight on the new nest. I'll give her the full day tomorrow to prove me wrong, then ill get her some eggs. Unfortunately I'll have mostly barred rock eggs for her, which I do prefer to give to the more experienced broodies. I have a few blue eggs so she should hatch a few at least. I've got eggs coming out my ears, but I'm pretty confident most of them are infertile as my rooster isn't very interested in those hens. I'm trying to only choose eggs from hens I know he mates with. Those young cockerels need to hurry up!
I have a black sex link hen (barred rock x partridge rock) I really want to hatch eggs from, but she is definitely not favored.
It's very early in the season for hatching, we still have frosts every morning. I don't think that will be a problem. I've had much more trouble in the heat than in the cold.
The nest is in a plastic dog kenbel, lined with wool, then a feed sack, then a thick layer of peat moss, then wood shavings, then linseed straw to form the final nest circle where the eggs sit. The straw nest circles are always the favored nests when I set up multiple options for the flock.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Hmm... That's an idea. I do have an experienced hen brooding now too in addition to Dusty, who is 11 mos. I'm not super attached to getting a bunch of chicks right now, just hoping for a few pullets to balance out the crowing boy band I got going here. I'm pretty sure Tina, the older hen, will do fine and I'm really more curious to see if Dusty hatches any and what kind of mom she will be. Plus this is her third broody spell since she started laying three months ago, so I guess she really wants to be a mom. She went broody after her first clutch! So we'll see. But I'm going to tuck your method away in my brain for some other time perhaps.

It's a handy method for a better chance of success with hatching. I don't always have the stars align, but it's handy when they do. I'll usually set a full dozen under a good hen, because it's almost certain somebody else will go broody before the 21 days are up, and I can give the new sitter eggs without having to wait the full 21 days again.
I had a pullet who was so committed to sitting. She was committed to her nest, she was going to go the distance. The only trouble was she didn't quite understand she was supposed to sit ON the eggs and not beside them. I gave her eggs from another hen on day 18, she hatched them and was a marvelous mother. She is now one of my best brooding hens, no more confusion on where the eggs are supposed to go.

This is her - Princess Fluffy Butt with one of her hatches.

 

[BDutch]

Loving the tax! I'll have to get some of my own tomorrow.
Well, it seems 1 pullet has decided she is going to sit tight on the new nest. I'll give her the full day tomorrow to prove me wrong, then ill get her some eggs. Unfortunately I'll have mostly barred rock eggs for her, which I do prefer to give to the more experienced broodies. I have a few blue eggs so she should hatch a few at least. I've got eggs coming out my ears, but I'm pretty confident most of them are infertile as my rooster isn't very interested in those hens. I'm trying to only choose eggs from hens I know he mates with. Those young cockerels need to hurry up!
I have a black sex link hen (barred rock x partridge rock) I really want to hatch eggs from, but she is definitely not favored.
It's very early in the season for hatching, we still have frosts every morning. I don't think that will be a problem. I've had much more trouble in the heat than in the cold.
The nest is in a plastic dog kenbel, lined with wool, then a feed sack, then a thick layer of peat moss, then wood shavings, then linseed straw to form the final nest circle where the eggs sit. The straw nest circles are always the favored nests when I set up multiple options for the flock.

Why not break her now and wait another month or two? She probably gets broody more often upcoming spring. Maybe the rooster and the blue layer mate more later in spring? Yo can also use the meantime to find a breeder who sells hatching eggs. Is there someone out there who has a chicken breed you want?

Last spring in April I bought fertilised eggs from 2 breeders who have breeds I wanted. Both didn’t live far away. Looked for ads late winter on a kind of Craigslist here (Marktplaats) for people who sell chickens or hatching eggs. Made contact and asked for hatching eggs. Some sell them, others don’t. Some like to hatch their own first (in incubators) and sell after they are done themselves. I find April/May a perfect time to hatch. This is the time when most wild birds hatch. Isn’t October/November wild bird hatching season in NZ?

PS forgot you didn’t trust her reliability. So maybe not a good idea after all.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Why not break her now and wait another month or two? She probably gets broody more often upcoming spring. Maybe the rooster and the blue layer mate more later in spring? Yo can also use the meantime to find a breeder who sells hatching eggs. Is there someone out there who has a chicken breed you want?

Last spring in April I bought fertilised eggs from 2 breeders who have breeds I wanted. Both didn’t live far away. Looked for ads late winter on a kind of Craigslist here (Marktplaats) for people who sell chickens or hatching eggs. Made contact and asked for hatching eggs. Some sell them, others don’t. Some like to hatch their own first (in incubators) and sell after they are done themselves. I find April/May a perfect time to hatch. This is the time when most wild birds hatch. Isn’t October/November wild bird hatching season in NZ?

I like to hatch my own, and kept pullets for this reason last season as they are unrelated to my rooster (and the cockerels, except one hen who is a half sister). Also all the chicks for this season are for selling, as I kept so many last season.
I try to start early, as by late November my hatches can start to fail due to humidity being too high (that's my conclusion based on the evidence I've got). It's possibly going to be better this season as it's not going to be La Nina, but honestly I just don't know. I usually like to start in early September, but I'll see how this goes. It's really not that cold, it's about 1 degree C in the mornings. No snow or anything, and it thaws by 8 or 9am.
The wild birds do all sorts of crazy things here. The climate bumps all over the place. We've had a really mild few weeks until a few days ago, temps up to 17 degrees, the daffodils are out and some branches on my plum tree decided to blossom!

 

[Iluveggers]

I don’t know what to do. My Marans is broody again. She’s the one who hatched 3 babies about 6-7 weeks ago. I wasn’t going to let her sit, but she has been broody so long and I had chicks arriving close to her hatch so I caved and gave her just 3 eggs. She mothered them well until about week 2, when she gave them a bit more freedom and one of them had feathers and scalp pulled by another hen for getting too close & away from mama. At that point I moved them in with the chicks I had ordered earlier in spring (it was great timing).

She has been broody almost constantly since about April. I had her caged on a roost in the coop for about 3 days, and she went right back to the nest. Now the cage is in the run. I remove the nests in the evening, she jumps on the roost herself, and in the morning tries to go into the nests after eating. Back in the cage all day.

I know this is not healthy for her. She is the most persistent broody I’ve ever dealt with. It is too late in the season here for my preferences for me to give her more eggs, and I am not adding any chicks until I’ve lost a few in this group.

 

[TropicalChickies]

The only trouble was she didn't quite understand she was supposed to sit ON the eggs and not beside them.

Oh my goodness, they are precious, aren't they?

 

[TropicalChickies]

I don’t know what to do. My Marans is broody again. She’s the one who hatched 3 babies about 6-7 weeks ago. I wasn’t going to let her sit, but she has been broody so long and I had chicks arriving close to her hatch so I caved and gave her just 3 eggs. She mothered them well until about week 2, when she gave them a bit more freedom and one of them had feathers and scalp pulled by another hen for getting too close & away from mama. At that point I moved them in with the chicks I had ordered earlier in spring (it was great timing).

She has been broody almost constantly since about April. I had her caged on a roost in the coop for about 3 days, and she went right back to the nest. Now the cage is in the run. I remove the nests in the evening, she jumps on the roost herself, and in the morning tries to go into the nests after eating. Back in the cage all day.

I know this is not healthy for her. She is the most persistent broody I’ve ever dealt with. It is too late in the season here for my preferences for me to give her more eggs, and I am not adding any chicks until I’ve lost a few in this group.

I'm sorry you are going through this, I've been there. It's hard to watch a hen just keep sitting and sitting, losing condition and weight, making herself unwell and feeling like you're doing everything you can to no avail. It's just tough.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Change the name to mister or sir Gaga. ?

Hehe, don't be such a square. Chickens are actually pretty gender fluid, as Shad's stories of roosters who sit on eggs and non-laying hens with spurs attests.

Lady Gaga, btw, prefers the pronouns "they, them, theirs." It's in their email signature.