Poultry Care Tips

[grunt]

That's a neat idea johno.

[flowerpower]

That is really cute. How are the little chicks, John?

[mnjrutherford]

That's an awesome idea Johno! Mike and I were discussing chicken home improvement just last night. I do believe we will give this a shot. Thanks for sharing! Root crops, turnips, mangles, beets, carrots, radish... those would all do pretty great in there as well, AND do double duty.

Also, our wedding anniversary was this last Saturday. We spaced it out completely. However, we did get a superb gift from one of our birdies:

[johno]

Here they are scratching out the old weeds. This is all the birds except one. The 5 in the foreground are what's left of the new ones.

[mnjrutherford]

Well our ladies have started laying eggs. We built a little incubator out of Styrofoam and so far, there are 4 eggs in it. However, there is an odd thing occuring. About half the eggs have a quarter inch hole in the pointed end. Thoughts?

[lavandulagirl]

What nesting material are they laying in? My hens have plywood nest boxes, with straw as a nesting material. Once in awhile, they scoot too much straw out, and crack the end of their egg on the wood. Or, you may have a hen who's attempting to open the eggs to eat. I'm sure there will be other ideas, too, but those are the first two I could think of.

[flowerpower]

How many hens are using one nest box? It's probably one of the birds poking holes. Maybe 2 broody hens fighting over space. If the eggs are being eaten, that's a whole different story. Then they are missing something in their diet.

I would never give my birds styrofoam. They'd eat it. lol I have the plywood boxes like Lav. Sometimes they will lay a bunch in one box and an egg breaks. But I never have problems with them eating their own eggs. They don't bother the duck eggs either. They'll lay right along side them.

[mnjrutherford]

Well, the styrofoam is just the incubator box. The nesting boxes are plywood with cedar chips. Would straw be cheaper? I'll have to get up on that with my feed & grain guy.

On the holes, at first I thought it was the birds pecking on them, but the holes are almost perfectly round, ALWAYS in the same spot on the egg, ALWAYS the same size, and the membrane is never perforated... Do the eggs always come out point first?

As for eating the eggs and something missing in the diet... They ate an egg yesterday for the first time. I'm pretty sure there is something missing. Maybe it's the oyster shell? We feed them a mix of whole corn (maybe we should get it cracked or shelled?), race horse oats, floating catfish food, black oil sunflower seed, and mash. We JUST got a small bag of oyster shell last week after they laid the first couple of eggs. We intend to get more when we go to the feed and grain.

OH, and there are 12 boxes in each coop and less than 12 hens. I lost count a long time ago! So we have more boxes than hens at the moment.

[lavandulagirl]

If they ate an egg yesterday, then that is the problem, almost for sure. They do peck at them for awhile. I bet one of your girls just finally figured out what's inside. The first few were curiousity, or else someone's toenail or something, and now they know what's inside. Chickens are very single minded, and once they realize they can eat eggs, they will do it ALL the time. Find a way to break them of this immediately, because if it becomes a habit, it will really cut into your egg yields.

[mnjrutherford]

Aug 10, 2010 8:17:58 GMT -5 lavandulagirl said:

If they ate an egg yesterday, then that is the problem, almost for sure. They do peck at them for awhile. I bet one of your girls just finally figured out what's inside. The first few were curiousity, or else someone's toenail or something, and now they know what's inside. Chickens are very single minded, and once they realize they can eat eggs, they will do it ALL the time. Find a way to break them of this immediately, because if it becomes a habit, it will really cut into your egg yields.

DAMN! This is not good news... So, how do I discourage them? My kids behave because if they don't they get long windy lectures during which they are required to look me in the eye. If they avert their eyes at any time, the lecture starts out at the beginning and is repeated. The chickens won't stand still that long much less look me in the eye.

[lavandulagirl]

Collect eggs several times during the day. Replace eggs with the fake, hard ones used to encourage nest usage. Look for signs of which one is instigating the behavior (obvious stuff, like egg on their face! ;D) and separate (perhaps even cull) the offender. It may not be a layer, ya know, it may be a rooster.

I have been VERY lucky, that my hens haven't taken up egg eating, even when we had the horrid scrub jay who would wait for the egg song, and then swoop in to dine. He left eggs with holes, and even with egg spilled out, but my hens never took up the habit. I have heard it is super hard to break the chickens from doing it once they start.

[mnjrutherford]

Aug 10, 2010 10:00:24 GMT -5 lavandulagirl said:

Look for signs of which one is instigating the behavior (obvious stuff, like egg on their face! ;D)

;D Love it! OK, so we will be watching for that now. We really have other worries as well. The last female guinea was starting a new clutch and it had 9 eggs. She was about 50' from her coop, in a nook under the swing set. Last night, while doing the rounds, my son discovered that there were only 5 eggs in the nest. No broken shells were discovered or any other evidence, but it was dark at the time.

Our neighbors have observed a fox coming out of the corn field on 2 occasions. Based on other attacks on the birds, this appears to be the culprit. However, for the eggs at least, a snake is also suspect. We have copper heads, black racers, and corn snakes on the property in abundance.

Meanwhile, we have 9 chicken eggs in our little homemade incubator. This is day 5 for the first 3 eggs. Each day has seen 1 to 3 eggs added. There is room for 3 more eggs. Based on research, we will candle them next Monday to ensure that they are developing property.

You may recall the attempt to hatch guinea eggs earlier in the year? We lost all 24 eggs. However, that was low tech compared to the set up we currently have. There is even a thermostat in the box!

[bluelacedredhead]

Jo, are you feeding your hens oyster shell? If not, Save all of the eggshells from eggs you eat. WASH them thoroughly and dry them for a few days. Then crumble them up fine and add them to their feed or in a separate dish. If they trample each other to get to the shell dish then that proves that they are lacking calcium in their diet. Just keep feeding them shell and that should help.

I've seen other suggestions over the years of filling an egg with hot sauce. It's been my experience that poultry actually like hot chili peppers. I used to feed mine cayenne peppers once a month to help deworm them. Hot sauce therefore, is a more costly, and possibly not a viable solution.

If the egg eating continues in spite of your efforts, you will need to find the culprit and remove her from the flock, permanently. Winner winner Chicken Dinner would be my suggestion.

[mnjrutherford]

We JUST started them on oyster shell when they started laying. So, they've only had it for about 5 to 7 days at this point. We were planning on getting a big bag when we go to the feed and grain next week. Do you think the egg shells might be better? Or the oyster shells?

The hot pepper thing is intriguing. I have those little Vietnamese peppers going on right now. Think I can use them instead of cayenne?

I forgot your last point... I'll have to post this, read your entry again, then modify this... yea, I love my age!

AH yes, the cull and eat comment! LOL No problem there. We've eaten 3 birds and we have 3 in the freezer. There's a BBQ dinner in the works for next Tuesday and I need some stock in the freezer. So, I'm sure the next killing is in the works.

Speaking of which, if you come across a video showing how to prep out the gizzard, I'd sure appreciate it. That is the only thing that really has me bumfuzzled.

[flowerpower]

I can sympathize with the fox problem. They snatched one of the wyandottes and attempted to grab the rooster another day. It must have just grabbed his tail and wing. Somehow Silvio escaped. His wing hangs a little but he's okay. I had my neighbor take care of the foxes. I couldn't shoot an animal. I still felt bad when he did it.