Category: chickens

Spring coop clean

On By CarynIn chickens, Coop

The sun has started to shine again. The spring rains aren’t done, but my eldest and I had some time to clean out the coop. Exercise and cleaning and out of the house! We put the chickens in a run with some scratch and some water, since they freak out when we mess with their coop. It worked well to have them not underfoot and not panicking.

Chickens locked in their run and out of the way

We removed all the old pine shavings and droppings, washed down the roost and sprayed it with vinegar, swept up and dusted. Then we put the roost back in, put new straw and dried lavender in the nest boxes, dusted everything with diatomaceous earth, and spread out four and a half bags of pine shavings. We didn’t spread out one the bags to see how long it would take the chickens to disperse it themselves. They did a fair job and had a low hill by the end of the day. Oh were they happy to go back to their coop!

Broody isolation

On By CarynIn chickens

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.

Sunrise in isolation for being broody

Nest box update

On By CarynIn chickens

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.

Next box curtain supplies

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.

Nesting box table with new bottom curtains

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!

Magic in a bottom nest box
Curtains open at night so I can see the culprits, who were put back on the roost after this photo.

Broody hen(s)?

On By CarynIn chickens

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.

Sunrise being broody

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.