Our outdoor/indoor cat Sophie came prancing into the house with a field mouse! A live one. Very live. Amazingly, after praising her for being a good hunter, she let me take the mouse from her. I took the little guy out to the meadow to let him go. Then washed my hands!!
Taking the broody hens off the nest, especially at night, seems to have done the trick for Magic and Cockatrice. They now great me at the door with the rest of the flock, asking for mealworms. It did not work with Sunrise, who seems to have the mothering bug worse than the other two. So I put Sunrise in isolation. We have a large cage that I built into the cupboards to isolate injured chickens, so I set up that area for her with food and water and NO nesting box. She is not happy, but she can see the flock and it is near the open door where she gets some natural light. My book recommends putting broody hens in a hanging a wire cage, which I can do if this doesn’t work. We’ll give it a couple days. It does feel a bit like sending a teenager to her room for excessive attitude.
The other problem with broody hens is that they take up valuable nest space. After catching two hens in the same box I thought something needed to be done, especially when I found an egg under the roost because a hen wasn’t able to have nest time. So I made more curtains and rearranged the other two lower nest boxes to be similar to the favorite boxes.
I used some old sheets to sew four panels, then strung the panels on picture wire using the screw eyes to attach the picture wire to the table legs.
The hens were quite interested in what I was doing. I had a large audience. And when I was done, a hen crawled in a bottom box. Hurray!
I noticed that Cockatrice (the hen) had sat on a nest for two days without producing an egg. I thought maybe she was egg bound, so my eldest and I gave her an epson salt bath and lubricated her vent. Then Sunrise started sitting the nest and yelling at me when I came near. At me! My hens don’t usually yell at me when I check nests (they do yell at me for meal worms). My Mom suggested they might be broody. Then Magic started on the same behavior. Three broody chickens. Ugh.
I don’t want broody hens. First, we don’t have a rooster, so all the eggs are infertile, so no chicks. Second, I have a full house; I don’t want more chicks. Third, hens stop laying when they are broody. Their “job” is to keep eggs warm until they hatch, so they don’t lay, don’t eat or drink as much, and only come off the nest to defecate occasionally. Hens can die because they starve themselves over empty nests. So with broody hens I am looking at less eggs, and the potential loss of a grown bird.
My approach to discourage broody hens is to remove the culprits from the nest when I find them there. I’m checking for and removing eggs more often (3 times a day or more), and after it gets dark, I take the hens off the nest and put them on the roost. It is too dark for them to find their way back to the nest boxes. We’ll see how it goes.
I was heading out to change the memory card in the trail cam and Sophie (our gray calico) was walking along with me (she likes to take walks in the woods with us), and Big Orange Tom was right behind her. This picture was taken moments after he realized I was there. He was focused on other things. Sophie is fixed, I am certain he is not. He does seem to have a thing for Cali girls. Hello spring. (And hello summer, since we have already had highs over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Yuck.)
Critters and Craft 