Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

lillibet_dripping

Please excuse me for butting in but I wondered whether any of you peeps have any experience of a brown-egg layer suddenly starting to lay almost-white eggs. The girly in question is a Bluebell and normally lays the biggest, tastiest brown eggs you can imagine!
Is it a feed deficiency, weather-related or just a blip?
Ta muchly
Lilli

beaujolais-nouveau

rubys_mummy wrote: »

however, even tho they're laying pretty well, its at odd times of the day lol! one lays about 11am, one lays around 3pm...never first thing in the morning!

The laying cycle is 25 hours, I believe, and for around six days out of 7. Also, the hen needs 13 hours of daylight to produce an egg, apparently (that's why battery hen farms have the lights on 24/7).

rubys_mummy wrote: »

however, they've eaten their own eggs twice now and i don't know how to stop it....

They will have learned egg-eating before you got them. Sometimes they do it out of boredom, sometimes it is by chance - they peck curiously at a cracked egg and find that it contains something they like.

rubys_mummy wrote: »

obviously i know i have to collect the eggs as soon as they're laid, but with them having a silly body clock,i never know when that will be! and they dnt really make much noise when they ARE laying to give me a hint!

Egg-eating is a habit very hard to break. But if you know when a hen laid her last egg, you will have an idea of when the next one will appear (see above, 25 hours, 6 days out of 7, after 13 hours of daylight). I haven't tried the mustard in a blown eggshell yet; at the moment, only one of my hens is an egg-eater, and I try to get to the eggs before it occurs to her to do so.

rubys_mummy

thank you so much for your advice....luckily i haven't had any more egg eating in the last few days!

we've just got them a lovely new big coop, so fingers crossed i can get another 3 hens to go with them

any advice on integrating them? i thought if i put them all in the massive pen (about 20m by 10m) they'd all get to know each other before they get locked in the coop on a night.....do you think that will work?

also....do i put straw or hay in the nesting boxes, or doesn't it really matter which? and what do you put under the perches where they sleep? they've only had a rabbit hutch thing to live in up to now, as i rescued them and had nothing else to put them in ,but the coop's arrived today and been built by my lovely hubby. they've had a nosy around in it but they haven't been up the ramp yet!

ljonski

straw and introduce them slowly preferably separate them but let both groups see each other through the fence. Well done - on being a new chicken mummy!

Eliza_2

rubys_mummy wrote: »

also....do i put straw or hay in the nesting boxes, or doesn't it really matter which? and what do you put under the perches where they sleep? they've only had a rabbit hutch thing to live in up to now, as i rescued them and had nothing else to put them in ,but the coop's arrived today and been built by my lovely hubby. they've had a nosy around in it but they haven't been up the ramp yet!

Mine sleep in the nest boxes anyway and ignore the perches, they don't seem to have read the same textbook as me!! I use shavings.

walkers60

I've just restocked with six new chooks. I put them all in the covered area under the ark today and it has rained almost non-stop since.
Went down at dusk to see if they had gone to bed and they are all still up not wanting to venture up the ramp! I have had to wade through mud tempting each one to come to me with grain, grabbing them and taking each one separately and putting them in through the nest box. I shone a torch to show them where to go to perch but three of them are virtually sitting on each other in the nest box not wanting to venture any further.

With hindsight I think I should have put them in the perching area when they arrived and then they would have had to have gone down the ramp to explore downstairs - then hopefully they would have realised where their sleeping quarters were and gone to bed on their own at dusk.

Tomorrow it should be sunny, I believe, so it may dry out!

Money_maker

rubys_mummy wrote: »

also....do i put straw or hay in the nesting boxes, or doesn't it really matter which?

Never use hay, can get bound up in the crop.

walkers60

Quick update - chooks survived sitting on each other in the nesting box last night. All came down the ramp for breakfast and I have been delivered of one egg! All is well.

rubys_mummy

went and got my 3 new chooks this morning.....2 light sussex and a rhode island red....clipped their wings before i brought them home, and 2 of them STILL managed to fly up onto the roof of the coop .... panicking now,cos if they can fly onto that,they can then fly over the 8ft fence

i've locked them in a run,joined onto their coop,so that hopefully they'll realise this is where they live now,and not try to escape!

i felt sure i'd taken enough off their wings as well, the tinkers!

oh by the way....my girls are all named now....martha, mary, dee dee, peggy, polly and doris

got 4 eggs off everybody today as well,which i wasn't expecting because of all the upheaval of bringing new ones in!

ljonski

I hope you know that you only clip one wing to unbalance them in flight ?