Brooding chickens are upon us. The girls are doing some hard time behind bars.
These girls have been in their laying boxes for much of the week. Our egg production has gone from 5-6 a day to half that. Yesterday we attempted "the chicken shuffle" as a remedy. I was outside all day doing some spring cleaning and when a non-broody hen approached the egg box, I let her in and shooed off the broody girls. This worked for a time, but required constant attention. So this morning at 6am, Adam and I greeted the 29 degree pale-sunshine air with a plan, of sorts. After reading several other blogs about how to deal with this problem (Our go-to is the Chicken Chick, who has a fantastic blog), we decided to save the $300 that a rabbit hutch would cost and dug around in our shed to see what we could piece together. We found a dog kennel from when Wilson was a pup, some spare wood, and spare hardware cloth.
Apparently, these brooding girls need to be eased out from their hormonal trance by separating them from the others and providing a boring, cool, light, and drafty. . . . what's the word. . . .prison. Thus, they are sentenced to a maximum security life for the next week or so until they stop growling. That's right, growling. They have gone from my sweet, sweetie-pie girls to nasty, growling, edgy crazies who have the single focus of hatching an egg.
These girls have been in their laying boxes for much of the week. Our egg production has gone from 5-6 a day to half that. Yesterday we attempted "the chicken shuffle" as a remedy. I was outside all day doing some spring cleaning and when a non-broody hen approached the egg box, I let her in and shooed off the broody girls. This worked for a time, but required constant attention. So this morning at 6am, Adam and I greeted the 29 degree pale-sunshine air with a plan, of sorts. After reading several other blogs about how to deal with this problem (Our go-to is the Chicken Chick, who has a fantastic blog), we decided to save the $300 that a rabbit hutch would cost and dug around in our shed to see what we could piece together. We found a dog kennel from when Wilson was a pup, some spare wood, and spare hardware cloth.
Apparently, these brooding girls need to be eased out from their hormonal trance by separating them from the others and providing a boring, cool, light, and drafty. . . . what's the word. . . .prison. Thus, they are sentenced to a maximum security life for the next week or so until they stop growling. That's right, growling. They have gone from my sweet, sweetie-pie girls to nasty, growling, edgy crazies who have the single focus of hatching an egg.
Despite all the rage, I'm still just a chick in the cage.
