Would you send her to freezer camp - advice please!

[Judy]

I'd probably give her a couple more months til laying season returns because I'm a softie, but then she'd go in the stew pot. I suspect she has an internal problem that will prevent her ever laying good eggs. Perhaps this will help:

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/publications/1/egg-quality-handbook/11/egg-defects

You can click on any of the topics at the left (I hope -- if the link works.)

 

[AinaWGSD]

I think you are doing what I would do in your situation. It sounds like her "egg factory" as others have called it is defective. Unfortunately it does happen, and it always seems to happen to the nicest hens. But, on the off chance that the issue with her laying could just be the short daylight hours I probably would wait until spring before butchering her. One hen isn't going to make that big a difference in feed consumption for the next few months, so I don't really see the harm in waiting a little longer and holding out hope if that's what you want to do.

I have a story very similar to yours. My favorite chick, an EE, was very much like your hen. I called her my "defective" chicken. She was sweet as pie to us, didn't run too much when we tried to pick her up, was totally relaxed when she was picked up, and one of my toddler's favorites. She got along well with all the other girls and was hands down our best forager. She just couldn't lay a normal egg to save her life. Just about every single egg she ever laid was covered in a weird membrane (kind of like an egg within an egg, except the outer egg had no yolk), many of her eggs had odd calcium deposits (we called those her "warty" eggs), and every single egg she ever laid was very thin shelled. She also laid two eggs/day (neither even close to normal) almost frequently and several times laid "siamese" eggs.
her first eggone of her "siamese" eggs...quite possibly the weirdest egg she ever laid
Late summer we decided to cull her because with all of the strange eggs it seemed like she was just an eggbound hen (or a case of egg yolk peritonitis) waiting to happen. It was hard, she was after all my favorite, but I felt it would be better to kill her humanely rather than wait until she suffered and died an agonizing death on her own. And when we were eviscerating the 3 hens we butchered my decision was validated. When we opened her up, there were large chunks of old egg yolk in her abdominal cavity. If we had left her on her own, these chunks of yolk would have eventually festered and become infected, causing pain and eventually death.
RIP Merna

 

[Time-Out]

I wasn't humanising the chicken, I was merely asking what is the harm in waiting a little longer, as so many others have said. The morale of my story was that you might find that she is fine and will lay great eggs (did I mention I was a great runner at school? - oops, here I go again!

)

I'm a vegan, but I don't mind what you eat. I've never tried stopping my OH from eating meat and he sits next to me at the dinner table. In fact, the only thing I've ever said is "Don't let the chickens know what you're having for dinner!"

ETA: a friend once suggested a solution to a potentially aggressive cockerel: hide a chicken for a week and bbq some fillets in front of the others. See if they get the hint

 

[lcammack]

Wow, thanks for all of your opinions. We originally were only going to get 4 hens, but the feed store suggested that since chick loss is pretty common we should get six just in case. Well we must have been better first time chick raisers then usual or just lucky because all of them thrived (I'm pretty sure it was just luck!). So my thinking is that if this hen was not meant to lay eggs she surely was meant for dinner (sorry to those who think of them strictly as egg laying pets). I can justify this because this chicken has had a very spoiled chicken life and I believe that whether that life is for 3 months or 5 years it is the quality of life that is most important.

I am going to give her till spring for three reasons:
She is under a year old.
I want my daughters to have time to adjust to the thought that she might not be around much longer.
One hen by herself does not eat much, so its not like I would be saving a tremendous amount of money or anything.

We did not intend for these hens to be pets, although they have become part of our "flock" and we enjoy them very much, but reality is that they were purchased to make food for us one way or another.

 

[silkiechicken]

She'll be still somewhat tender under a year old.

That said, for future chick mortality. If you get them at 3 day old or so from a bin of chicks at the feed store, meaning if you can see their wing tip feathers clearly, you might lose one or two per 100 or so. By the time they are in those feed store bins for a few days, the weak ones have likly already died and been removed. If you order a fresh box from the hatchery that has not already taken a toll on the weak ones from shipping stress, then you might expect more deaths, or a whole dead box if the shipment got lost on the way to you or weather was really hot or cold.

 

[Smiles-N-Sunshine]

My two cents: All our poultry and rabbits go into the stew pot eventually. I love the flock, but don't get attached to individuals. When their performance declines, it's off to freezer camp, and I'll use their feed to raise their replacement.

Rabbit does get three chances to raise a litter to weaning age. Productive hens are far easier to come by than a good rabbit mama, so I'm quick to dispatch - but this being winter time, I wouldn't judge egg production too harshly.

 

[r4eboxer]

Do you have a roo?
I have read and heard (my brother has 6 hens and one does not lay) that if no roo is present one hen will take over for the roo and not lay (or lay poorly) and even may crow. My brothers hen did this and she has never layed.

So if you have a roo never mind, if not is she taking over for one?

 

[lcammack]

Quote:
That is really interesting. I have never heard that before. We do not have a roo (we are in city limits, even though we only have one neighbor and 4 acres it is a no no

. To bad to because I would love to have some chicks hatched the old fashioned way! I have never heard her crow, I will keep my ears open!