Broody henny - part 1

  We have one cage in the poultry house that opens out into the pasture. We use to as a time out pen for broody hens. You see we keep chickens, a lot of chickens as eggs layers. We count on those chickens to lay their little oblong balls of goodness just about every day. Every once and a while, some bird brained hen will take it into her head to sit on those eggs to try and hatch them. When that happens, the hen stops laying. Really the hen stops doing just about anything. She will sit on that nest nearly 24-7 with a look of zen-like concentration only getting off to eat, poop, and grab a sip of water once or twice a day. 

  For us, that means no more eggs from that hen and an occupied nest box of which we barely have enough as it is for as is. We honestly wouldn't mind the hens brooding their own eggs especially in light of our last incubator debacle, but our dumb hens can't even figure out in which nest box they decided to go broody in the first place and will often return to the wrong, empty box leaving their previously brooded eggs to cool and die. 

  We tried all kinds of way to snap a broody hen out of setting (including dunking in a bucket of water), but the best way we've found is to put the girls in this cage for a few days to cool their heels and get them back with the egg laying program. 

  One day we got the idea of putting one of the rabbit nest boxes into the cages with a couple fake eggs to see if the hen would continue to brood in a more controlled environment. We went through a few hens who just weren't interested, then finally one white rock took up the challenge and plopped herself into that box. After a couple days, we tucked a handful of eggs under her and let her get to settin...

To be continued....

Eggz!

I hate Tuesdays. 

I hate Tuesdays the way most people hate Mondays. 

Tuesday is my long day at my "real job" at the vet's office. 

However, the good thing about Tuesdays is that the birds are kept in all day so they are forced to lay IN their pens instead of us having to go on an Easter-esque egg hunt through the pastures. 

 Here is our haul from this Tuesday. 

(The pups think it wholly unfair that I use a dog bowl for anything other than filling their bellies.)

We got 8 duck, 4 chicken, 2 guinea, and 6 quail eggs. 

Not too shabby! 

It's especially good since we are about to start another batch of eggs incubating. All the above eggs save the quail will be cooking in the big 'bator by next week. 

Quails comin

The incubator went into lockdown today. 

We should be lousy with baby quail very soon. I think we have decided that it really isn't worth it to raise quail for meat since it takes at least 2-3 birds to make a decent meal for one person. There does seem to be some interest in the eggs though, so we are going to try and get a few more females from this batch. Right now their enclosure is so big for the few that we have that it is more like a habitat. We have plenty of space for more girls. The males will probably make an appearance on Big Onion's food blog though.