Broody Hen #2 2018

Well, I noticed a hen staying on her box the last week. I tried pulling her out and tossing her lightly outside, locking her out of the laying area, taking her eggs every day and she continued to sit. I told William to move her to the top boxes and if she stayed there we would give her eggs. I thought this might discourage her if we kept being annoying.

She decided she liked the top left laying box and has stayed there for a few days now. She had 5 eggs under her the last two days but I was a little uncertain about that decision. On one hand, I have plenty of replacement hens growing in my yard and in my chick coop and still in the incubator. On the other hand, last year I wouldn't let a brown hen have chicks and when I finally did she'd been sitting for almost 6 weeks near the end and ended up getting eaten so … I wasn't going to make this girl sit that long.

Today, I went to the barn and collected the eggs and left hers there. When I came back to the house I checked the incubator and got a great idea. I pulled four eggs from the incubator and brought them to the barn - well William did gently. He switched her eggs out and brought her five into the house for me to deal with. Now she can hatch out some eggs as if she's been sitting for only three weeks because these are due next weekend and if they don't hatch I will still have chicks to slip under her when the time comes.

Phew. Crisis averted.

In other news - the pigs keep getting into all the feed and it's making me mad. I even yelled at them yesterday and told them they were bad boys!


They just wagged their tails. 

The tougher farm days

Farm update :

Our morning started off with an unrealistic but optimistic idea to move our meat chicks into the big barn so our smaller chicks could have more room.

This did not go as planned.

As we checked the fence to let out the meat chicks for some air and sun, Corey discovered a Rhode Island Red chick had somehow escaped the locked down chick coop. (The pigs are really causing a lot of headaches.) Unfortunately, one of our cats ALSO discovered the RIR chick roaming around and beat Corey to it. This escalated into a frantic family chase for the cat, finally caught by William, although too late. We buried - Spice the chick next to Pepper the chick (a chick that died during hatching).

They are buried in the same box as Corey's peppers are growing.

NEXT, one of the dogs bit Steve (or Wilbur - I still can't tell them apart) Which evolved into ANOTHER family chase to catch the bleeding pig.

The chicks didn't get moved - for another week or two, and I'm still missing a piggy. I don't think it's the injured one either.

Sigh.