The very same day that the bobcat took our rooster, I started collecting eggs that the hens were laying. A hen can remain fertile many days after a mating, so I figured (hoped) that the eggs they laid that same…
Dismal Hatch & Mailorder
Category: Chickens
Bobcat Strikes: Rooster Lost
A sad day at the homestead. Our rooster was taken by the bobcat, and in mid-afternoon too! I was in the house when he struck. I had been out in the front of the house, cutting up fallen branches with…
Preserving Eggs in Lime water, 5 month test
Every spring, the hens lay more eggs than we can comfortably eat. This spring we tried something new (to us), preserving whole eggs in lime water. Today was the first taste test at 5 months. We regularly leave unwashed eggs…
New Chicks: The sustainable flock
My brooding hen’s eggs hatched this past Friday. At first, four of her seven eggs hatched within hours of each other. A fifth egg showed “pipping” but little progress. The other two eggs showed no sign of pipping. They may…
Merry Christmas: A gift of eggs
We got a nice Christmas gift today from our two youngest hens. They both started laying! They started at a good time, as the rest of the older hens stopped laying during The Molt. We were running out of stored…
Wandering Hen, Errant Eggs
One of my hens has taken to laying her eggs somewhere other than the coop’s nest boxes. This isn’t allowed, for obvious reasons. She has to be ‘broken’ of her attachment to her new nest site, but it has not…
Got Chicks! The Broody Hens Deliver.
This past Tuesday Broody’s eggs started to hatch. She had two up and cheeping around. Sumo, the other broody hen, wasn’t supposed to start hatching until Friday, but she had a couple hatched on Tuesday too. Then, I remembered that…
Too Much of a Good Thing: Breaking a Broody Hen
Having a hen go broody is a sustainability blessing, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. I was trying to induce my hen that usually goes broody to get into the mothering mood but I…
Can You Induce a Hen to Go Broody?
Given the talk of food supply disruptions, I was especially eager that one of our hens (unimaginatively named “Broody”) would hatch another clutch of eggs. Last year, she got the mood in July. Could I coax her into sitting earlier?…
Readying Chickens for Winter
The first snow has fallen and nights here in New Hampshire are in the single digits. How do we help our chickens cope with the harshness of winter? (Hint: we don’t put little sweaters on them) We do, however, take…