Building and Brooding

Nicholas and our broody hen "Sesame".

Okay...I will admit it, raising chickens can be a little bit boring. Once I raised my chicks and built everything to keep them safe and warm, I really haven't done much other than, clean up, feed my chickens and eat their eggs all winter. The most exciting thing that has happened lately, is that one of our hens went broody. What this means is, even though her eggs are not fertile, she can't help but want to sit on them all day and malnourish herself. The signs are pretty easy to notice. First of all the hen will want to do nothing but sit in the nest. She will act funny, sometimes spacey, and get cranky when you approach her while she is in the nest. They get a different kind of screech to their call, and if you remove her from the nest, the hen will often sit herself down wherever you move her to, and will probably make her way to the nest again very quickly given half the chance.

Nicholas as we build our brooding box.

What is a chicken owner to do? The big downsides are that this hen is not taking really good care of herself, no longer pumping out the egg a day the others are, and she is hogging up valuable nesting real estate, which somewhat stresses out the other hens. There are controversial methods to stop a hen from being broody, like dunking them in cold water for a few seconds, putting them in a separate wire bottom cage and not allow them to get cozy, and another was to place the broody hen in a completely dark place alone with only food and water for 24 hours. Though most people agree, you can't really change hormone behaviors with these remedies, some experienced farmers swear by it. Most farmers over the years have simply slaughtered broody hens to have a more harmonious flock. This sort of weeds out the broody trait of future generations of chickens, but naturally comes back up now and again. The final method is to get some fertile eggs under that hen and let her raise a family. This is something I have wanted to try for various reasons.

Nicholas and our finished brooding box.

My main reason is to re-supply our flock with egg layers, as our hens will only lay eggs for about 2 years. You can order chicks or fertile eggs by mail every year, but for the backyard Juneau chicken farmer, this can be costly as small amount of chicks cost more to ship sometimes. I can get 5 live chicks or 12 fertile hatching eggs shipped to our home for about $40. I would love to not spend $40 a year to resupply our chicken genetic pool, yet without a rooster, it seems I must get resupplied from somewhere. Our local feed store has fertile eggs for sale at $5 dollars a dozen, yet they don't control breeds, so the chicks will be a mixed bag of different kinds of chickens. I have decided to get some of these fertile hatching eggs, build myself a brooding box, and give this hen the building blocks to take her natural instincts and turn it into a positive thing for our flock. Not only would it be a cool thing for me and my son to do, but if I get things going and learn as much as possible, I can raise chickens for slaughter, and probably become a cheaper source of chicks for my community.

Clutch of local fertilized eggs.

We built a brooding box, but we wanted something to serve multiple purposes. First we wanted it to be easily moveable and able to fit in a vehicle if we wanted to take our chickens to a Fair or to display them for some community event. We also wanted to be able to put a broody hen and chicks in there for natural incubation, and also wanted to be able to raise chicks we have ordered from a hatchery. We wanted to also use it to separate a possible sick chicken. And lastly, we wanted it to be weatherproof, so we can put it out in the yard as part of a chicken tractor during the warmer summer months. So we made it light and small yet tall enough to house a full grown chicken, put a waterproof roof on it, and put high sides to protect brooding chicks from drafts.

Sesame brooding her new clutch of eggs.

Next, we went to our local feed store and purchased a dozen hatching eggs. The nice lady there got us un-washed eggs laid the same day to ensure freshness, and she did not refrigerate them. We put the brooder box in our garage for warmth, and placed our broody chicken in there, and I guess after reading up a bit, its better to do this at night, as our hen really didn't want to sit on the eggs for a couple of hours. I assumed the hen would have to sit on the eggs right away so they would hatch, but as long as the temperature stays within 40°F - 80°F, the eggs can safely wait for 4 days to (a bit riskier) 2 weeks. Our eggs were only exposed for about 12 hours, so we were happy about that.

The next step is to candle the eggs after 5 and 10 days under mom to determine which eggs are viable, and remove any that may burst and spread bacteria. Im finding lots of very interesting and informative info on this subject, and I will share them on my next post. For now I have to build an egg candler...Until next time.