Balancing happy chickens and "farm" needs - advanced chicken wrangling

Hubby runs a small chicken egg business which allows us to qualify as a "bona fide farm".  When things are running well, we produce between 5-7 dozen eggs per day and sell all of them to people in the area, with lots of weekly, scheduled customers. To do so, he buys "PoL" (Point of Lay) Industrial Chickens raised by other small scale farmers.

We try hard to treat these Chickens as our "employees", so a policy we began early on, is that even if Industrial Chickens aren't supposed to go broody, if one does so, this need is accommodated. Last year we had two birds who did so in the usual way, but the infrastructure I used for that was already getting old, and is now simply no longer a safe option.

This year, was tricky. A bird "sort of" went broody - she was not quite consistently in the nest box, but when she came out in response to activity in the shelter, she came out all fluffy and making the "cluck, cluck" Mother Hen noise. Sigh... I didn't need this. I had never experienced this sort of "confused" mothering behaviour before.

I hatched a plan... (bad pun, sorry)

STEP 1: I decided to dog crate her right in her shelter and gave her 5 fake duck eggs. After about 5 days, she seemed to settle, but only reliably covered 4 of the eggs.
This was not going to work farm wise - my infrastructure is spread very thin due to a bunch of factors. I don't have space to house a mom with 3-4 chicks.

STEP 2: Move her crate to the brooder and give her 4 real eggs. Put 22 more eggs in my friend's incubator that lives in our hall bathroom.

STEP 3: Hurry up and wait. Occasionally check the incubator eggs for viability. Not perfect, but good enough. It's down to 16 eggs with a few of them "maybe's".

STEP 4: Fire up the brooder 3 days before hatch. First the under floor heat. Then due to the crappy weather we've been having , the wall heat also.

STEP 5: Chicks start hatching. A little white head is seen poking out in front of Mrs. Coop, right on schedule with the incubator. The Incubator hatches for about 18 hours. Thirteen live - the last 3 aren't viable.

STEP 6: 10 PM (it gets dark very late where I live at this time of year and we wanted "dark")  Warm my hot rice pack and put it in the bottom of a bucket with several rags over top. Gently lift all the chicks from the incubator - some still damp from hatching - into the bucket. Carry it up the hill to the brooder. Hubby did the honours of lifting each chick out of the bucket and into the dog crate with Mrs Coop. As soon as Mrs Coop heard the peeping, she started the "cluck, cluck, cluck" Mother Chicken call. She sucked them all in like a pro!


STEP 7: Close the dog crate door, with just a hanging waterer - this would keep any chicks from wandering the first night by accident.

STEP 8: Go up early the next morning, remove the dog crate door entirely, and leave Mom to do Mom things!


For those of you doing the math, Mrs Coop has 16 chicks to raise. She hatched 3 of her 4 eggs. This is enough to be worth the time I will have to put into keeping her fed, watered, and the coop cleaned. This is enough, that if there are even a reasonable number of females, I'll be able to make a genuine flock out of the birds. They may not lay quite as well as Industrial Chickens, as they are crosses, and they aren't sex-linked, so we'll have some young roosters that are good eating even if they aren't very large. To add to this, part way through, a hen from last year's hatch went broody, the normal way, so she's now sitting well on 10 eggs that will only be 2 weeks behind.

I'm *really* happy to have "mom raised" birds. The issue is, that we have several portable shelters for the egg farm business that are only efficient if they have 15 to 20 actively laying birds in them. With the two moms kept with the younger birds, and the two groups eventually combined, I should have acceptable numbers. The Farm needs and the Chicken needs have a chance!

I love how you’ve accommodated their chickens needs! I’ve just been letting mine do what they want, and it’s not working in a way that works well for the humans or the chickens. Ended up with confused hens and rotten eggs

We had a Buff Polish at one point growing up who was broody but would not stay on the nest.  The fertile eggs we had were guinea so my mother hatched something like 14 of them in the incubator to give to her.  Needless say she couldn't cover even a 1/3 of them being such a small bird herself.  Made for some interesting things as instinctual behaviors conflicted.  They were very disobedient children and I think frustrated her no end.   Eventually they ended up roosting in the trees behind the chicken house up 15 feet with her on a low branch under them alone.

Bethany Brown wrote:I love how you’ve accommodated their chickens needs! I’ve just been letting mine do what they want, and it’s not working in a way that works well for the humans or the chickens. Ended up with confused hens and rotten eggs

Exactly. Every farm is different, but I hoped that by posting this it would give people ideas of ways to make it work on their farm.

We've been given a number of second/third/forth hand dog crates of all different sizes. I often use them for a broody hen if my options are limited. However, birds can easily over-heat in one depending on the weather.

However, I know of too many depressing situations where hens are left where they have no privacy for setting. In the wild, they would find a hidden spot to set, and often would have a rooster standing guard as well. I have rarely heard of a mom successfully setting in an active coop. I hope you can start planning now your next broody. I had to wing this one a little bit, but still spent almost 2 weeks coming up with a plan that I thought would work for everyone involved. Mrs Coop look and sounds soooo... happy every time I poke my nose in the brooder. That is worth it!

Jay, your thread title offers an awesome turn of phrase. I can't stop chuckling. It has a ring of Monty Python perfection about it. That ought to earn a BB badge at least.

If I were an orator, I would say:

"Mr. Speaker, it is my fine privilege to rise today and confer the honour of "best phrase of the month" to advanced chicken wrangling. These words will inspire coming generations of chicken wranglers, standing forth in the service of our country as we move toward a better future.

You'll notice that the orator didn't say a single thing. Nor wrangle a chicken. Our brave new world!

Upon reflection, I think I could sell T-shirts with that logo. It has double-take powers. Cheers

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: Upon reflection, I think I could sell T-shirts with that logo. It has double-take powers. Cheers

Does that mean I could take a T-shirt and embroider onto it?

                                                Advanced Chicken Wrangler

or maybe more like:

                                              Advanced Chicken Wrangler      

I think it would need to be fancier - maybe written in Chicken Scratches?

Humour aside - keeping our feathered friends happy and content with their lives, takes forethought and effort. If we want the world to be a permaculture paradise, we need to set that example. Working with nature and imitating nature  means working with *all* of nature and imitating *all* of nature - not just the bits that are convenient to us. I would be truly thrilled and honoured if *all* permies who have chickens earned the title of "Advanced Chicken Wrangler" for finding ways to fit chickens happily into their ecosystem. I know many who already deserve the title!

Jay Angler wrote:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote: Upon reflection, I think I could sell T-shirts with that logo. It has double-take powers. Cheers

Does that mean I could take a T-shirt and embroider onto it?

                                                Advanced Chicken Wrangler

or maybe more like:

                                              Advanced Chicken Wrangler      

I think it would need to be fancier - maybe written in Chicken Scratches?

Is there a breed of chicken that happens to share a font name?  I was just through the available fonts on my version of MS Word, but nothing jumped out at me.  I don't know many of the flavours of chicken.  Alternatively, one could design a graphic based on chicken footprints to spell it out.  It seems you've sent me down a rabbit warren....

Advanced Chicken Wrangling, Part 2... I promise to try very hard *not* to swear at he who shall not be named...

This is another year of Industrial Chicken Broodiness. Is this a new trend?

Either way, Broody #1 got moved to an area we call, "The Attic" which if set up properly, is secure from rats and mice, and for chicks, is a fine spot for Setting and then Brooding for about 4 weeks. She hatched 5 chicks from 7 eggs about 2 weeks ago and is doing a fine job of raising them.

Broody #2 got moved to a crate in the Hoopie Khaki shelter - the only place I had. Because I was worried about the heat, I put a bunch of eggs in the incubator at the same time. Alas, because of the heat and a technical problem, she broke brood. She's reasonably happy living with the Khakis with one other chicken, but now I had a incubator with a bunch of developing eggs in it.

The earth just kept rotating and days went by. I had one chicken that was acting weird and a bit broody in the spring, but she told me no - clearly NO!

Then in the nick of time, another bird was acting broody. But that unnamed "he" still has chickens in the brooder who should have had other housing way too long ago, so the brooder isn't an option.

So, Broody #1 got more than a little freaked when I had to grab her, net a couple of babies, move them to a mini-hoop (bottomless cage on grass), go net the rest of the babies, give them time to settle, and Broody#1 checked out her new home and approves! Phew... one problem solved. I *really* wouldn't have wanted to do this in cold weather, but we're still warm enough, the chicks should be fine.

Then I had to thoroughly clean The Attic, set it up for the next chicks, get out a cat crate and a larger crate, carry those all the way to the field with 6 day-olds in the cat crate, get the bigger crate into The Attic, load the babies into it, then go up the hill, tuck broody chicken under my coat, and carry her down to The Attic. We were close... so very close... and the broody I was carrying heard the cries of the scared and slightly cold little chicks. She marched right into that crate making *all* the right mother hen noises. I closed the crate door for the night, and when I removed it in the morning, she just looked at me as if to say, "I've got this under control!" At Duckie bedtime, she was sitting by the feeder all fluffed up with a little head poking up out of a wing - yes, she *does* have it under control. Yeah Mom!

I have 3 that are sort of broody, sitting on their "egg of the day" plus a couple from sisters. That is inside the coop.
Yesterday, doing a bit of searching as we were looking for Roo#2 [not dominant]. we find white feathers on both sides of the fence, and the fence is a bit pushed down. Coyote!
Looking a little more, not 5 ft from where we saw the first feathers is a black Cuckoo Marans sitting on... I don't know how many eggs, but too many for one hen, I think. The poor momma probably saw her protector get killed. Sad.
At this point, I have  my adult laying hens, now with only one roo, in the main coop. But I also have about 20 that I incubated, so a straight run... and now, I don't know what will happen with this hen.
I decided to leave her where she is, put water and food nearby, fix the fence and wait.
I also marked 21 days from now on the calendar, in case she is broody for no reason.
So I have 2 coops that are usable, but only one that has laying boxes and is insulated. the straight run has too many roos, and since a knee replacement is planned for this winter, I plan to add all the hens from the incubated run to the main flock. The main rooster, now alone will be replaced in the winter with one of the "fresh" ones. He is a bit aggressive.
That leaves mama and her babies if she hatches all of them and does not get snatched by a coyote. For those, I really don't know what to do. I'd like to keep the hens, but I'm not sure I'll have the room, even in the main coop.
Keeping a bachelor pad in the winter for the roos that mamma will hatch may be a problem: The 2nd coop is not insulated...
So yeah, I'm feeling your pain, Jay.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote: I'd like to keep the hens, but I'm not sure I'll have the room, even in the main coop.

My experience is that if things are over-crowded, the outcome will be worse. Despite having that experience, there tends to be too much pressure on me from the cheep seats, *not* to sell hens we have no space for, *not* to cull birds that are old and starting to fail, and to just pretend that everything will work out fine.

I think part of being an advanced chicken wrangler is knowing that we have to make those tough decisions and to do what's best for the long-term health of the flock and the homestead. I am fast approaching that place with 2 of my older Muscovy. I'd love to just let them live out their days, but there are several critical reasons why that's a bad idea. I will miss them, but I also know there are some young Muscovy I'd love to keep and can't without making the tough decisions and following through.

Jay Angler wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote: I'd like to keep the hens, but I'm not sure I'll have the room, even in the main coop.

My experience is that if things are over-crowded, the outcome will be worse. Despite having that experience, there tends to be too much pressure on me from the cheep seats, *not* to sell hens we have no space for, *not* to cull birds that are old and starting to fail, and to just pretend that everything will work out fine.

As usual, you are correct. I do have a bit of time before a hard frost, which is when the tough decisions need to be made.. I think in terms of batches, [by the chickens' age]. I'm reasonably sure I will cull a few hens from batch #1]plus the big roo. He is a big Black Cuckoo marans and is aggressive.
Then, I should be able to keep all the new hens [from batch #2] plus 2 or 3 roos.
For the new ones [batch #3, which are not born yet], I have a friend who has only one hen [the others were snatched]. That hen is quite lonely and follows her like a dog.
She's planning to build a new coop that will be rodent-proof. She might want batch #3 if she gets the coop built on time!
Additionally, I have already sold some to a guy who may be happy to buy some more.