 |
| Puffing up their feathers and holding their wings out to appear bigger and hide the clutch underneath them. |
First off the signs.
My two Ameraucanas were never the friendliest, they would always run if you tried to pick them up. They were never aggressive or defensive in any way. Never would peck or bite any bird or human, just sort of skittish. So it was a real surprise when I went to collect the eggs one morning and Joan bit me! I pulled my hand out and tried to come from a different angle, only to have her take a big chomp right on my finger. She didn't break the skin or anything, but it hurt and it was totally out of character. She puffed out her feathers and spread her wings out trying to make herself look bigger and hide the eggs from me.
 |
| The clutch of fertilized eggs |
I also noticed that both Joan and Ethel would not come out of the nesting boxes when I threw scratch out into the run. In fact they stayed in the nesting boxes if there were eggs there or not. I only saw them come out for about 15 minutes once a day, to eat and drink.
Both of the hens were also very vocal, always making noises and clucking, when they were usually pretty quiet. This is also a sign of broodiness, as you can hear in the above video.
They were both really warm. I thought that maybe they were sick and had a fever.
So I had two birds that were warm, not eating, more aggressive, and loosing weight from the lack of eating. After a search on some message boards I figured out that they were broody! They had all the classic signs.
I read that broody hens will also pull out their breast feathers to make a soft nest for the eggs, ours did not do this.
Now, we know what we have - What to do about it?
I read about a few methods to break the broodiness, which is actually a chemical reaction inside the birds. Sort of like when an animal goes into heat. They get these hormones that kick in and they are compelled to sit on eggs until they hatch. I read about getting a wire cage and putting them in it and suspending it from the ground so that they get air flow under them and the drop in temperature would eventually break them of their broodiness. I also read about cold baths. Dunking the birds in cold water up to their vents to bring their temp down and that would break them. I also read that it could take up to three weeks of doing this before they would get over it. Ain't nobody got time fo' that!
I also read that you can just let them sit on eggs, but they will remain broody until after the chicks hatch, and sometimes longer. One person recounted that her broody hen mothered the chicks until they were pullets bigger then her!
We opted to let them hatch.
So we bought 12 fertilized eggs from the same place that we bought the hens and put some under one, and some under the other. Only to come back later to find Ethel abandoned her clutch and was trying to share Joan's with her. So we moved all 12 into one box and let both of them sit on the eggs. We candled the eggs and pulled out a couple of duds. A few ended up not hatching and one got eaten by the Bard (Jessica) so we started with 12 eggs and got 6 chicks, which is about par for the course from what I understand.
When hatch day came, we were very pleased to find that both Ethel and Joan were caring for the baby chicks, and were not fighting at all (which was something that can happen as well) they both worked as a team caring for the babies and were very protective. They also got stressed out and fretted and fussed over the babies. So typical mother behavior!
 |
| cheep cheep! |
 |
| Happy moms co-parenting those chicks |
 |
| Happy hens and happy chicks |
0 comments:
Post a Comment