Cécile Stelzer Johnson

You will know that a hen is starting to get broody when she puffs up at your approach and protests vocally. Place your hand over her body, like a rooster might do, to avoid getting picked while you remove her from the nest. Slide your hands on each side, lift and pull her off.
Then you can also take the eggs. (If you try to sneak under to steal them, then you may get picked!)
At that point, you need to make a quick decision: let her brood a clutch to term or stop her. She may go broody even with no rooster in the flock because broodiness is a function of body temperature as much as hormones: you will notice that they rarely go broody during a cold spell, but when temperatures soar, they may go broody.
When one hen goes broody, the others tend to lay in that nest early in the morning, when she goes to eat, poop and drink. (I've had one that has 21 eggs under her when I discovered her clutch!)
That is not a good situation because some will be much more recent and they all need around 21 days, so the poor girl could be sitting 40 days or more!
If you want her to raise that clutch, it is still a good idea to isolate her and her clutch at floor level, but still within sight of the flock, maybe in a darker corner of the coop. She will protest and may abandon the clutch. If she does, it was a soft broodiness and you have not lost anything: She might not have gone through with the whole 21 days.
If you decide to break the broodiness, please get over the idea that "it is mean". It is not mean: During the time that she is broody, not only she will not lay, but she will eat very little, drink very little and not poop much:
She can exhaust herself brooding. (At this point, letting her brood without results is what is mean, I feel).
So make the decision early: it is kinder. I have a barrel with cold, fresh clean water to submerge her in. The charitable thing, if you need to break her cycle, is to grab her gently, pet her while you walk her to the barrel full of cold water, adjust your grip so you hold her by her wings, but close to the body and don't let go, even if she picks at you. She will be mad and panic, because at that point, she is entitled to believe that you wish to drown her. (You heard the expression "mad as a wet hen"? that's where it comes from)
Submerge her entire body except for the head and hold her until she "surrenders". She will stop struggling about one or two minutes into it, sometimes longer if she feels that she can escape, but leave her in until she stop struggling. I held one a maximum of 5 minutes.
Pull her out and pet her, speaking softly and let her go. Sometimes, that's all it will take. Sometimes, you will need to repeat the treatment, but if you take it early, a 2-3 minutes cold bath with her head above water should do the trick.

It often happens that my hens are giving me an egg with extra calcium, and occasionally I get one without a shell. I always have calcium available to them, so I figure that they occasionally indulge in more than they should have. I have Black Cuckoo Marans and Isa Browns and a mix of the two.
The fact that in the same flock I have extra calcium on some and no shell on the other leads me to think that it is a 'personal choice', and there's not much I can do about it.
There is one hen (ISA Brown) I'm monitoring closely because she had a "blowout" (Bleeding hemorrhoids). I separated her from the flock or they would have killed her, picking at her butt. I put her on a no protein diet (Nothing but greens and a little grain, some grit but no calcium) to completely stop her egg laying, and she did, immediately.
Now, she is 'cured' from her blowout and after 2 weeks, she started laying again, but eggs with no shells.
I put her back with the flock and after a few days, she started laying normal eggs again. Yesterday, I saw an egg with a spot of blood, so I will have to check on her, just in case.(They say that once they blow out, they are more prone to blowing out again.)
I think that hens may have a way to monitor the eggs that they put out, but it is probably limited.

I noticed that the brown calcium is much easier to remove than the white. Occasionally, if I pick at the white eggs bumps, part of the shell is removed along with it, resulting in an egg that is not saleable.
The Black Cuckoo Marans make a darker shell, and occasionally, when I see something on their shell that I decide to scrub, the whole color comes off (along with the bloom, unfortunately).
They are perfectly OK but they end up looking light brown. When they occasionally scratch such an egg, you see the scratch marks an a lighter egg is revealed underneath.
Does anyone know when the color is added in the oviduct? Is it at the 'bloom adding stage' of the egg?

Matt McSpadden wrote:I want to provide a screen for some privacy between the road and the property. In our area, this needs to be at least 30ft from the center of the road or it might get cut. This leaves that spot between the break and the road. What would you plant there to make the space be useful?
It would be good if it could attract birds, bugs, butterflies and similar for either food or habitat (with the knowledge that it might get mowed a couple times a year.
It needs to regrow because the town might mow it a couple times a year.
I don't plan to eat anything from that side due to all potential for runoff from the road.
It needs to be hearty because of all the salt that comes off the road in the winter.
The spot is about 500 feet long, so it needs to be affordable to do for a long stretch.
Any ideas?

Well, Matt, I'm exactly in your situation: a long road and a county crew that loves to come and cut stuff down. And yes, the distance is 30 ft from the center of the road, which does encompass basically the whole ditch. I do not want to plant in the ditch because as soon as there are flowers (and pollinators visiting them), the county crew comes by and mows it, killing the pollinators. Lucky when it's not the phone crew that will actually spray sh...tuff to kill hazelnuts. I tried to explain to them that hazelnuts will never reach the phone lines, but it's like talking to a wall.
Since our oaks have the wilt (and we can't sell that wood to anyone who might move it off the property), I've taken to cutting  the dead oaks and the brush and pile it ...just out of their reach in one long 600 ft berm.
While it isn't as pretty as a bed of pansies and lilies and tulips, the added elevation causes the salty runoff from the road to stay in the ditch and move on. I keep my water. Think of the ditch as a swale... that you are not allowed to use.
I'm also accumulating a great deal of biomass which in time will rot and give me room for a nice hedge. It's only about 3ft high, but hey, water can't go uphill, so even a small obstacle works wonders. I toss in there the seeds I didn't get to plant. Now, I have a number of false indigo and staghorn sumac.
The only view is a big field of potatoes, or soybeans, or whatever they decide to crop that year, so I won't miss the view, plus, the hedge will cut the harsh winter winds. There is a big empty field to our North/North West.
I also have a second berm  much higher, (5-6 ft) about 20 ft closer to the house. The winter snows accumulate in between the 2 berms instead of getting lost to me. (We are in sand country, so keeping as much water as possible is important to me.) I started growing some spruce, white pines and whatever will grow on its own there.
In that higher berm, on the protected side, we now have a lot of wildlife: squirrels, quails, rabbits, wild turkeys. I even saw a pheasant a couple of years ago.
This barrier also make the movement of the deer more predictable, which is handy since hubby likes to hunt...I've given up attempting to plant anything in the ditch itself since it is sure to get wrecked once or twice a year.
Your soil, climate of direction of the winds might make you want to do something else, but I just thought I'd get your creative juices flowing ...
Good luck. Let us know what you decide...

I had no idea that rhubarb could grow from a segment of root, just like comfrey. That opens up all sorts of experiments on plants I want more of!
When I discover a plant that is not where I'd like it to be, I will now remove it, harvest the roots and attempt at multiplying them.
I have some comfrey but would love to have a lot more, only closer to the chickens, so here is a new project for my helpers and me.
We were talking about getting a second crop from store produce, and this falls pretty much in the same bag: Multiplying plants without spending a fortune.
Have you noticed the price of trees, bushes, seeds? It's getting nuts!
Time to get creative!

Melissa Ferrin wrote:Bumping up this old thread because I am a nopal evangelist!
Paul loves sunchokes because, apparently, you can just dig them up and eat them whenever, even after a freeze. Apparently it's even better, after a freeze?
I wouldn't know as I live in a place with only an occasional frost and certainly no ground freezes.
Even if you do get a freeze, there are varieties that peole say can come back after going dormant, or you could try what my grandma used to do with her roses in northern Iowa, cut back to 10 inches above the ground, cover with an old styrofoam cooler, put a bick on top, then pile hay all around.
Because nopales, with a bit of watering, can produce tasty food continuously, or can live through dry spells and only produce their tasty food when it rains.

In zone 4b, Wisconsin, we cannot grow nopales but we do have a couple of opuntia species that can pass for nopales. They make yellow flowers and a red fruit and will come back without winter protection. This is May 4th and mine are just coming out of dormancy.
I tried them and I can't say that I would cross the road to eat one, but that's my personal taste. It seems like a lot of trouble to cook it, too.
Sunchokes, however, are growing fine in zones 2-9, so a lot more folks can enjoy the bountiful tubers at any time (Except, of course, when the ground is frozen solid. Hopefully, though, a person thinks ahead and harvest enough to last the winter).
I like to eat them raw, like radishes, boiled with a dollop of mayo in standby, creamed, in soups and stews, baked, so they are quite versatile. The first meal of the year give me a bit of flatulence, but if I eat just a couple at first, and then increase the amount, I'm good. (It's like mosquitoes: the first one itch like crazy and make a big bump on your skin but later, your immunity goes up).
You probably live where they can grow, so you might want to give them another try, but for ease of storage, preparation, versatility and abundance/ yield, it's hard to beat the sunchoke.

Riona Abhainn wrote:Plants I've gotten to grow from grocery store food:
potatoes, mini-white pumpkins.
Seeds I've tried which didn't work:
cantalope once, bell peppers once, I'd try both again, in fact I'm about to plant bell pepper seeds again to try, but I think like William of Ohio said they are picked too early to go to the store so the seeds don't mature.  I'll try anything twice in the garden though.

Cantaloupe should work unless you got "suicide seeds" (a seed that bears sterile offsprings by design). For the bell peppers, Thekla is correct: Green peppers are just immature yellow, red, orange or purple sweet peppers. Last year, I didn't know and I tried to plant the seeds of the green pepper and it was a complete failure: Not one of them germinated.
This year, I bought the 3 pack yellow, red and orange sweet peppers from the store and cut them in half. I allowed the "stump" inside, to which the seeds were attached to stay with the seeds and let them dry a bit for about a week. I think this allowed them to keep suckling from the mother, so to speak  and finish ripening. The seeds fell off with a gentle rub from my thumb.
They were planted in a seed starting mix, with a heating mat (to put all the luck on my side: sweet peppers are more tropical as they come from South America). Also, my Wisconsin zone 4b is short.
Well, long story short, they all came up and I'll have many plants to give away!

Anne Miller wrote:If I wanted to start a food forest from what I could get at the grocery store I would start with fruit that will grow in my area.
A lot of items from the grocery store will regrow though these are not likely candidates due to a small yield.  Like onions, celery and carrots.

I second the motion, in particular for all biennials, like celery and carrots.
Biennials will grow a root and strong reserves to last the winter. In the second year, they are more interested in making seeds. So if the idea is to harvest the seeds of some carrots or some celery, that's certainly a great project.
By the way, I bought some lovage seeds this winter. I once had a lovage plant that regrew and the taste of celery was stronger than celery. It might make more leaves, less stalk, and the stalks may be thinner. They also said that in perfect conditions, these enormous celery-like plants can reach 6ft!
I'd be happy with less, but hey, if they grow that big, who am I to complain?

Katya Zaimov wrote:
“I think the foliage and the green beans will be the parts we eat, with the dried beans being seed for the next year and a fall back food source

”

I think the best part to eat are the young green pods, although the young leaves also taste excellent. I have also dried the pods successfully for later use. They are excellent in stews and casseroles. I am not a fan of the dried beans. When I was a kid my grandmother would roast some beans on the stove top of the wood stove and I loved them but now I don’t have teeth for this type of snack.



I would not have thought of roasting dried fava beans. In fact, I've never even tried favas. This year, however, I bought fava bean seeds, so I'm grateful for the idea. I got this recipe:
https://www.fearlessdining.com/roasted-fava-beans-recipe/
Does that sound like the beans your grandma made for you? In the fall of the year, I figure on yanking the vines and tossing them to my chickens.

Riona Abhainn wrote: Last year I tried planting in late April (zone 8b) and nothing happened, it might have been because I was using seeds from grocery store peppers, both javanero and seranos.

I'll try again this year.  I like trying something twice before giving up on it, in this case "it" being those seeds saved from grocery peppers.

Don't give up! I bought some sweet peppers earlier this year (January) and saved the seeds. I figured that I had better plant a whole bunch, because, coming from a grocery store, they probably wouldn't grow.
Well, they all came! I like the yellow, red and orange the best, so that's what I planted. I put 2-3 seeds in each little pot... and they all came. I have 18 of each, which is probably way more than we'll need (Hubby doesn't like sweet peppers... Oh, darn!)