Unintentional chicken parents in Colombia. Now what?

[N F C]

Hi, hope you find what works best for you and the chickens. Thanks for joining us!

 

[chrissynemetz]

Welcome to BYC! I've never had feral chickens, so I can't offer you any advice. Good luck with whatever you decide, and please keep us posted.

 

[Tookie]

Hello, and welcome to BYC! We're so glad you decided to join us!
Good luck with your chickens!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Welcome to BYC @AdrianaG

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Since it sounds like the first hen’s entire brood of chicks was killed within days of hatching, the second hen’s chicks are likely to share a similar fate if left unprotected. Feral chickens are still domesticated, and still need the assistance of humans to survive. If you want to control the population, I would do so by providing nesting boxes and removing the eggs after they’re laid so the hens can’t hatch them. These eggs are perfectly fine to eat as long as they haven’t been incubated for three or more days.

 

[Jenbirdee]

What an adventure. Thank you for not let the babies be dog food.

 

[FunClucks]

Since it sounds like the first hen’s entire brood of chicks was killed within days of hatching, the second hen’s chicks are likely to share a similar fate if left unprotected. Feral chickens are still domesticated, and still need the assistance of humans to survive. If you want to control the population, I would do so by providing nesting boxes and removing the eggs after they’re laid so the hens can’t hatch them. These eggs are perfectly fine to eat as long as they haven’t been incubated for three or more days.

It is unclear to me if these are a game type chicken well adapted to the area or someone's domestic chickens that got out and maybe bred in the wild a time or two. I agree, the closer they are to standard domestic chickens, the more they would require that type of care to thrive.

@AdrianaG can you post pictures of the chickens? We should be able to tell by looking at them what kind they are.

 

[AdrianaG]

Since it sounds like the first hen’s entire brood of chicks was killed within days of hatching, the second hen’s chicks are likely to share a similar fate if left unprotected. Feral chickens are still domesticated, and still need the assistance of humans to survive. If you want to control the population, I would do so by providing nesting boxes and removing the eggs after they’re laid so the hens can’t hatch them. These eggs are perfectly fine to eat as long as they haven’t been incubated for three or more days.

That is our goal, convert the feral hens to egg suppliers. If only there were birth control for feral hens! My hope is that after this clutch is out of the nest Negrita will continue to lay her eggs there. We thought we had succeeded with Capuccina, but after giving us eggs for a coup,e of weeks she has decided to go broody on a nest of 2 eggs, one fake, one real.

 

[AdrianaG]

It is unclear to me if these are a game type chicken well adapted to the area or someone's domestic chickens that got out and maybe bred in the wild a time or two. I agree, the closer they are to standard domestic chickens, the more they would require that type of care to thrive.

@AdrianaG can you post pictures of the chickens? We should be able to tell by looking at them what kind they are.

Here are the two original hens and the guys. - Negrita, Capuccina, Mocaccino and Cocacolo. In the last week two more hens have appeared sporadically, a female version of Mocaccino and another black hen.

 

[triciayoung]

Let me understand this. There are a couple of roosters and now how many hens roaming free around your property?
One of these hens Negrita, hatched 9 chicks which you have taken from her and imprisoned in a run with a concrete floor.
Where's mum?
Let them go. Provide food and water on your property if you can and leave them alone. Nature will sort out the population growth.

Mom went with the chicks according to what he wrote above