A strange thing happened yesterday – one of our laying hens died, leaving us with nine remaining. It's very perplexing, as we don't know how or why it happened. The day before, Orrin had let the chickens outside, as the weather was pretty decent, and he said he noticed a few drops of blood on one of the Columbian Rock hens, but she seemed fine. Then yesterday, he found one of the Rhode Island Reds dead in the chicken house. He couldn't see anything wrong with her, he just wondered if maybe she was injured somehow the day before while they were outside, and then died from the injury. I think we'll never know.
In other chicken news, one of the Buff Orpington hens has gone broody, which means she wants to sit on the nest all day, keeping eggs warm to hatch. Well, we hadn't been leaving any eggs under her because it's still chilly outside, but decided to just roll with it and see what happens. At the moment we'd like to keep our breeds pure, so since we have a Rhode Island Red rooster, Orrin is starting to put Rhode Island Red eggs under her to take care of, maybe accumulating 6 or 8 over the next week. Then we'll see what happens. In theory she'll take care of the eggs and then take care of the chicks once they hatch. I wonder if they'll be ok in the cold, but since she's interested, we thought we'd try it. If it works, there will be some chicks in a few weeks (chickens have a 21 day incubation period, on average), and if some of them are female (usually about half are), then we'll have more laying hens about 6 months after they are born. If it doesn't work, we're just out a half dozen eggs or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment