Hi all.
I read this thread every single day; it's like checking in on friends. I rarely post, but now that I'm here to post an idea of mine, I need to first tell everyone how much I love spending time here, reading about you, your families, what you've all been up to. Congrats to the relevant peeps on the new dogs, the new chickens, the trips taken and the trips planned.
Here's the thing: I've just about had it with one of my Delaware hens. She's two and a half years old, beautiful to behold, pristine white feathers with a great "necklace" of typical Delaware feathers of black around her shoulders and she has black tail end feathers. Her name is "Necklace".
She's lively, alert, and feisty; big and heavy; clearly the Alpha bird in my small flock of five girls. The whole flock: One Black Marans about 3 years old; two Delaware hens each about two years old, and the two newest: Buff Orpingtons each five months old today.
Necklace has two problems: she keeps deliberately breaking her eggs, and she's a tough bully in asserting her Alpha status.
For the egg eating/breaking, I've tried lots of remedies: kept her wearing pinless peepers (plastic blinders) for a year, two months of using a slanted rollaway nest box floor, blackout curtain in the nest box, liquid calcium squirted directly into her mouth daily for weeks ( to strengthen her egg's shells so they wouldn't break so easily when she pokes them), luxuriously thick piles of wood shavings in the nest box, confinement in a separate hen house for two weeks 24/7, mustard and hot sauce in blown out eggs, high protein feed daily, and high protein snacks daily, plus ten hours a day of free ranging on grass and in the shrubbery every day of her life ('cept when it's raining).
She's kind and gentle with me; squats when I approach her, I can easily pick her up and she lets me hold her, pet her, etc.
But boy oh boy, when I put down one of the other girls after holding and petting them, she flies at them and gives them a good whack of a peck and a wing smack or a breast bump. She chases the two pullets from the bowls of food and water if she finds them there.
She lays about three eggs a week now. In her first year of laying, it was a reliable six eggs a week.
I'd like to give her away to anyone here that would like to try adding her to their flock. Maybe she will do better in a new flock, new surroundings, new routine. Maybe one of you will be a better fit for her particular self.
And takers? Pretty hen, free of charge. I'm in Freeport, in Nassau County.
-Carolyn252
