The ups & downs of novice chicken owners.

[NovaAman]

Hey Brie, does the "Old Timer" have any helpful wisdom on this one?

 

[Eg-Head]

I am one of the many subscribers that enjoy your emails. It finally seems that the chickens have a nice home, with Bryan's muscles! Every woman needs a great man like Bryan to help with the harder tasks. So now that you can breath a little bit, take some time to submit a picture to your stories. Keep enlighting us with Mr.Wellings 'gifted' notebook. We want to hear more!!!

 

[Briezeechicks]

Hey Brie, does the "Old Timer" have any helpful wisdom on this one?

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does..." If your hens won't lay in the nest boxes... catch them up when they go to roost and lock them inside the coop for about a week. Sometimes you have to entice them to lay in the boxes with dummy eggs. I use ping pong balls...put two or three per nest. The hens will eventually push them out of the nests, but by that time, they've claimed the nest boxes for their own. When they are laying in the nests... let them out. Most likely, they will go back to lay in the nest they have claimed... this works for roosting, too. I have several that want to roost on top of the dog houses at night. I just lock them up a couple of days...a chicken's brain is about the size of a pea, and they don't remember things sometimes....we just have to remind them what we want them to do...they aren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier!"

Yes, Eg-Head it certainly is nice for the help. Being that I am new to all this, it is nice that he already knows. But when he's away, I want to do all that I can so he has a little time to just kick back when he comes home. I think now that we've got all the animals squared away, things will be easier. Today was a breeze!

The Anatolian puppy, which we got as a guard dog for the poultry, has decided she likes the goats better. I have put her back with the ducks twice. She was back outside the goat pens again this evening. If she goes in, she gets rolled, but she still goes back. I don't know if she's going to be a poultry guardian or not. She's still awfully young. 12 weeks I think, but she's doubled in size it seems. It's hard for us (me) not to play with her and treat her like a pet. We do pay attention to her, inspect her ears and feet etc. so she knows we need to handle her, but we don't play fetch and tug-o-war or anything like that. The kids are OK with this. I am the one having the problem, as usual. They remember my M-I-L's Great Pyrenees, who never did accept the children, and chose her flock over them. It doesn't seem to bother them a bit! My history with the show dogs was so "hands on" and constant companion, this guardian stuff is foreign to me.

One of the Dom's laid a "rainbow" egg. It is a nice, lovely shade of brown on the top, and fades to almost white on the small end. Very pretty, but wonder if this is normal, or if something is missing from her diet? Will try to find out tomorrow.

Brie

 

[NovaAman]

Yes, it is normal to have happen. I have a girl who lays a green egg, sometimes it is multi shaded. I also have a girl whose eggs are sometimes spotted, other times solid.

I am the same with dogs...

 

[roohugger]

Very sad. No eggs for breakfast this morning! Played with the moles instead.

 

[NovaAman]

Aw! Lol, doggy jail! How sad puppy looks! Lol.

 

[SuzanneW]

Nearly 10 year's ago, my husband and I moved to France. We saw plainly that the little house hut attached to our house was for chickens and kept promising that we would keep up the "inheritance" but one thing after another and that was just "kept promising" - until we are going home one afternoon from an outing and was behind a lorry and we caught a look at tons of chickens inside this lorry - obviously on their way to be prepared for human consumption, which I turned my head away from! Then out of the blue, my husband says: hey did you see that? How could I not?!! A chicken flew out. My husband said that it would be no use as it had landed rather badly, so we just kept driving - until another one fell out. This time I begged poor hubby to turn the car around and see if this chicken was ok. We did and he got out of the car and proceeded to hand her over to me. He was rather negative and said she wouldn't survive, but I insisted different and said that she felt alive and her eyes were bright and so: welcome to our first ever hen who we named: henrietta. She did survive, which was surprising with out crude methods lol but we did figure that straw may be a pleasant thing. What a wonderful surprise when she gave us her first egg! She lasted a good 6 year's before some creature (not a fox) did the deed. And we have gotten better and better as the year's have gone past and now have 14 chickens.

Our eggs are raved about and so I get a little bit of money from selling them. We really resented one year going back to buying from the supermarket lol but it showed us the difference because even the good can become mundane!

Friends are astonished that I can tell by the egg colour which variety of hen gave it. I tend to keep secret how easy it is lol

People go on national tv with their astounding shaped eggs. We probably would be millionaires if we did this lol

We cannot imagine our lives with chickens.

Suzanne

 

[KnobbyOaks]

Welcome to BYC, Suzanne, and that was a very interesting story.

 

[roohugger]

Rescuing hens is addictive. I once paid too much for a tiny old bantam hen locked up with an enormous rapist rooster. Her legs were so badly infected with crusty leg mites. Logic said no my heart said yes

 

[SuzanneW]

Thank you for that and for finding my story interesting lol