Despite there being four nesting boxes in our chicken coop, the girls often seem to want to lay in the same box. This morning, our orpy jostled another one of the hens out of the box she decided was the favoured nesting box of the day
One of my Rhode island red has sharp and curvy beak and she can catch and kill a mouse in seconds. I saw her doing it the other day then she left the dead mouse to the cat.
My chicken coop was in the camper on my truck, as I needed the birds to go eat bugs while I work on the property, then come back to the rental where it's safe for the night. Lots of odd things happened with all that, including them yelling at people when I was gassing up the truck or had to do an errand.
I had to take the truck to get inspected, one was in the truck, declined to get out, so I closed her in, and she rode along. (She yelled at the guy doing the inspection.) When we got back to the yard, I backed the truck into it's spot, went to open it and let her out, 2 others were yelling up a storm at me. I opened it, she tried to jump out, the other two jumped in, shoved her out of the way, and dove for the nest boxes.
The one who had rode was all annoyed at being shoved back in the truck, so she stayed in and yelled at them while they laid (VERY quickly!)
I guess chickens can hold it!
Especially if the coop has driven away.
The wait for the preferred nestbox is definitely a thing with my chickens as well. Most of the time, they just wait next to it, making impatient sounds. Once though, I saw a hen just climb on top of the one who was already in there. I think she actually laid her egg whilst perched atop the first hen, because after the original occupant left, there were two eggs.
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
I have 6 nest boxes and 30 hens. Guess how many they use. Two. You can see them all out there, impatiently tapping their toes, checking their watches, and singing their individual egg songs - all off key, while the 4 roosters are crowing about how late they're going to be, to meet the turkeys and ducks, for lunch! I wonder if 2yrs ago, some of them didn't wipe the seat, when they were done, and no one will just let it go.
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Yesterday the weather was nice we left the back door open for a while. A broody hen walked in, jumped on to the bed, laid an egg and didn't want to leave! I told her to find somewhere else.
I don't believe we have a "weird things ducks have done" thread, so this will have to do.
Abbey (Muscovy) was going broody in one of our smaller chicken next boxes. This was soooo.... not going to work!
So I carefully moved her and the liner, bedding, down and golf balls to a Muscovy nest box in "The Attic" and gently replaced the golf balls with Muscovy eggs.
Abbey's response was not just "no" but "HELL NO".
She climbed the walls for the rest of the day, and then pushed the nest box further from the back wall and settled down behind it. I have no idea if she laid an egg there or not, but when when she was settled there for over a day, I carefully pushed the eggs from the nest box under her tail, and some of the down as well. She's been happily nesting in the space *she* made, ever since.
Yes, I have very opinionated ducks! I try to compromise, really I do. They *have* to nest where I can protect them both from vermin and other ducks adding eggs to the nest until the due dates are all messed up and the numbers too high. In a perfect world, they would *choose* to nest in a spot I can just drop a nesting cube over top of them. When they don't, I move them and either they find a compromise we can both live with, or they break brood and can always try again at some point later in the year.
My bantam looks like a pigeon and acts like one too. For a while I couldn't figure out where she roosted at night so I stalked her before dark. So there she walked to an oak tree, flew 8 feet up to a branch, kept on walking and hopping up the branches until she was 12ft off the ground. In winter, she lives inside an evergreen bush just fine like a wild bird.
Adam--not necessarily hermaphrodism. I found online, after experiencing it, that when the flock loses its rooster sometimes one of the hens will take over his "duties"--crowing, or in my case, mounting other hens. I don't know what the evolutionary point is--it's not like she can fertilize eggs.
I engage often in what my former neigh bor called "chicken gossip" but all I can think of now is watching a hen peck the side of a plastic bucket--for like, half an hour. Couldn't figure out it wasn't food?
I filled both rooster dog cage 8 foot square, and the coop for females with cut grass, the chickens devour any greens and the rooster area turned into mud flats.
One of my hens took to laying her eggs on the front porch right in front of the door. She would even lay then right in front of us. Not shy at all!
Once when we had the garage door open all day for some project, when we went to close the door at night, an egg rolled off the top and smashed into the ground! 😂 I never figured out who decided to fly all the way up there to lay their egg but we found a couple more "Easter eggs" hidden in the garage that summer. Luckily we found them before they got rotten or exploded!
We gave my dad three chicks and those ladies were so spoiled. Their pen was inside my dad's fenced garden and they would roam around eating bugs and scratching up and eating the grass but they wouldn't eat the fruit and veggies unless they were handfed. Like they just ignored the blueberries until my dad picked them for them and held them out in his hands. They liked peas but they had to be shelled for them. Stuff like that.
My son tightened up my old coop a couple of years ago and a friend gave me three hens that she sort of picked at random. One must have been very old because she died a shortly thereafter. That left middle aged Buffy and a pretty purple teenager, Pip. The heat lamp stays on most of the time as winter here can be really really cold so I get about five eggs a week from Pip. Buffy not so much. Her eggs are kind of pointy shaped and shells are thin. I decided that she must be a bit slow instinctively, more of a pet than a producer.
One day I was cleaning out the heated water bowl and didn’t lock the gate firmly. Before I knew it Buffy was out the door and headed away over the snow drifts. There was no way to catch her in hip deep snow and she disappeared into the woods. “That’s it.” I thought. “Something will have you for dinner tonight.” I grieved but to my surprise two days later when I went out to check on Pip there she was, next to the gate asking to be let in. I gave her a hug, which she clearly didn’t want, and put her back in the coop. She must have amazing survival skills and a terrific homing instinct. Sorry I doubted you, Buffy.
Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land... by choice or by default we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs. (Stewart Udall)
This is Randy. He's a young rooster the grandkids fell in love with, that kept him off the chopping block for a minute. Young Randy got his name after having sex with a dead hen that fell into the horses water trough, twice!
Fern the rooster has taken to following me into the coop when I go to scoop the poops from underneath the roost. The first time, he looked highly suspicious and bit at the shovel. Since then, he just hangs out and supervises while I do it.
A little while ago, Celeste the Faverolles hen was experimenting with being broody. She was sitting in the box and Fern was hanging out in the coop guarding her from disturbance by Harriet and the other hens trying to lay eggs. I was taking her grubs to make sure she was getting enough food. Next time I went in there, I found Harriet in the box with Celeste, also acting broody...for about an hour, then she left and returned to chickening. Maybe she decided that playing broody was a great way to get attention from Fern and snacks? Or perhaps she did it because she's always trying to burrow under Celeste and figured that since she was sitting on things anyways, this was her moment?
We made them a fancy new nest box out of carefully chosen cherry pallet boards. Bigger, more ventilation and a nice soft bed of pine needles. Nope, the tiny cardboard box that's barely big enough and sometimes tips over, trapping them as they try to exit is clearly better. Someone clearly went in and nicely arranged all the pine needles into a nice soft nest. I suspect it was Fern, since I saw him going up to it and tidbitting with the pine needles. But they refuse to use it.
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“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
I tend to name a chicken that moves in with the ducks, "Miss Dickens", however I've got one who I'm terribly tempted to name, "Miss Catken" - she soooo.... must have been a cat in her former life. She's *always* underfoot and she *always* wants to be on the other side of whatever door is there.
Yesterday, I heard the boys making an alarm sound I've never heard before. They have their usual "sky monster" alarm, but this was different. Then my partner spotted the monster, just as it was going behind the spruce trees. I was expecting a bird of prey and was very confused when I saw it start to move back into view. The motion was just bizarre, clearly not a bird. More of a rotating motion. At first I wondered if it was a weird drone, but no, it was an escaped birthday balloon in the shape of the number two. So apparently, scary balloons get a different alarm than hawks. I think it was the chicken equivalent of "What the....?".
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
Heather Sharpe wrote:Yesterday, I heard the boys making an alarm sound I've never heard before. They have their usual "sky monster" alarm, but this was different. Then my partner spotted the monster, just as it was going behind the spruce trees. I was expecting a bird of prey and was very confused when I saw it start to move back into view. The motion was just bizarre, clearly not a bird. More of a rotating motion. At first I wondered if it was a weird drone, but no, it was an escaped birthday balloon in the shape of the number two. So apparently, scary balloons get a different alarm than hawks. I think it was the chicken equivalent of "What the....?".
LOL!
We had a birthday balloon from next door get caught in one of our trees. It triggered the entire flock to the point where I had to go out and see what happened. Just a random helium balloon that would peek over the top of the house before being pulled back down.
I understand your chicken's confusion because I had my own for a small bit.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
Kristine Keeney
gardener
Posts: 693
Location: South-southeast Texas, technically the "Golden Crescent", zone 9a
Michael Moreken wrote:I filled both rooster dog cage 8 foot square, and the coop for females with cut grass, the chickens devour any greens and the rooster area turned into mud flats.
In our yard, my husband will dump the grass over the fence in piles for the chickens to scratch up. Once it's had a chance to get eaten and/or dry, whatever is left either goes to the compost bin or the coop for bedding - unless the geese spend the afternoon standing on it. They like to be in tall places, and the pile of grass is generally the tallest place in the yard.
It took a bit before I realized that's why they were heading to stand in the middle of the road - they figured out it's the tallest area - thankfully it's the "residential" road and not the County Farm-to-Market Road.
As it is, the neighbors are amazingly patient with goosish road blocks and the geese have learned to get out of the road for traffic, though they still dislike the schoolbus.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
Since I got rid of the rooster a hen has been playing rooster. She would try to grab other hen and mount. Poor hens lower in the pecking order are losing wing and tail feathers because of her. How can I stop this?
May Lotito wrote:Since I got rid of the rooster a hen has been playing rooster. She would try to grab other hen and mount. Poor hens lower in the pecking order are losing wing and tail feathers because of her. How can I stop this?
Hi May, sorry to hear you are having this problem. It's distressing when any of the hens get hurt. She does look like a fierce chicken.
Here are a couple of threads with detailed advice about bullying in hens and hens becoming roosters which might help.
Thanks Sarah, my chicken is not changing physically and she is still laying. Also she is not the top hen and still gets pecked by another over foods. Maybe she's just being a bully.
My older chickens were from a neighbor free ranging and crossing several breeds and younger ones were from the hatchery. The old ones all have weird personalities and the younger ones are tame and do what chicken should do. I don't know if there's a connection or not.
May Lotito wrote: she is not the top hen and still gets pecked by another over foods.
My experience with chickens on their own without a male rooster is that the top hen is rarely the bully. It's a lower ranking chicken who picks on those further down the order. It does not seem to be to do with her keeping her position either as that is usually not under threat.
The same thing happened when I had five cats. The top cat never exerted her dominance. She was just the boss and nobody ever challenged her, including the lone male. Cat number three used to chase the lower two.
Maybe the older chickens from your neighbour have "weird personalities" because of inbreeding. Apparently, that can cause aggression in male roosters (this is from another permie but I can't find the thread right now).
“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit: Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. “ Brian Gerald O’Driscoll
Jay Angler wrote:I tend to name a chicken that moves in with the ducks, "Miss Dickens", however I've got one who I'm terribly tempted to name, "Miss Catken" - she soooo.... must have been a cat in her former life.
Speaking of reincarnated chickens, I am sure my chicken "Buffy" is a reincarnation of "Cheepy", the house chicken we had when I was growing up.
Buffy is secretly horrified that she has to live with the other chickens in the coop as she would really like to be in the house sitting on my lap while I checked my emails and then wandering into the kitchen to hang out with the cat and the dog.
Cheepy would have liked that too (OK, except that emails hadn't been invented in the 1970s). She ended up as our only chicken and she liked it that way.
One summer, we had to go away and Cheepy went to stay with our very laid-back neighbours. When they went out to a summer house on one of the offshore islands, Cheepy went with them. "Was she OK on the boat?" my Dad asked. "Oh yes" they said "she sat up on the bow, no problem, and when we had guests come to the island, she went down to the dock to greet them".
She had a better summer than we did.
“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit: Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. “ Brian Gerald O’Driscoll
Kristine Keeney
gardener
Posts: 693
Location: South-southeast Texas, technically the "Golden Crescent", zone 9a
May Lotito wrote:Since I got rid of the rooster a hen has been playing rooster. She would try to grab other hen and mount. Poor hens lower in the pecking order are losing wing and tail feathers because of her. How can I stop this?
When we had a lack of testosterone in the coop, one of the older hens did the same thing - being a bit of a bully and mounting the lower-ranked hens.
Now that our roo is in freezer camp, I'm glad we have five cockerels coming up to fill the gap. High Jump had to go because he was "rooster aggressive" and managed to eventually kill a cockerel and our old (and much loved) rooster.
I hope your hen settles, soon. It's hard to have to put aprons/saddles on hens for bullying. I haven't figured out a way to protect wings or tails.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
I've been giving my chickens an herbal formula for worms to keep them healthy and their immune systems strong. They think the herbs are weird and decidedly not food. Unless I mix them with some black soldier fly larvae. Then they go so crazy over it I have to try to give it to them one at a time in the coop so they don't fight. The only problem is, one of the roosters is so good at his job that I have to work to get him to eat any. He always grabs a huge mouthful and then tidbits with it. Even if he's in the coop alone, he still does it while the girls go nuts trying to get in. While adorable, it is problematic as far as making sure he gets his dose. I never imagined I'd have to fight to get a chicken to eat bugs! He always picks out all the BSFL to give to the girls and then eats whatever herb mush is leftover. So the only way is to give him the herbs by themselves. I find this hilarious, since I have to resort to bribery to get the hens to eat them.
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
We had to bring one of the roosters inside to sleep last night. Our house is quite small, so I could hear him in his crate from my bed. He had been asleep for some time and as I was starting to drift off, I heard a small sound coming from the crate. He was tidbitting in his sleep!
I've witnessed the same rooster hanging out in the nest box, making a low clucking sound and scratching around. I assume this is just good rooster behavior. The funny part is that anytime he realizes I can see him, he walks out, puffs up and pretends like he wasn't in there.
“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
One summer, we had to go away and Cheepy went to stay with our very laid-back neighbours. When they went out to a summer house on one of the offshore islands, Cheepy went with them. "Was she OK on the boat?" my Dad asked. "Oh yes" they said "she sat up on the bow, no problem, and when we had guests come to the island, she went down to the dock to greet them".
She had a better summer than we did.
Did you read about the hen that sailed around the world??
And my chickens that drove around in my truck looked like that too!
I needed the bugs on my property eaten, but couldn't leave them there alone, so the truck got a camper, that I made into a coop, and we went to work. I taught them to load up when it's was time to go back to the rental and I'd drive them back. Always fun to stop for gas, they would yell at people...
She completely devoured that rose!
I know they eat all kinds of things and will have individual preferences. I wonder why she prefers the red over the white? I would venture that they smell as sweet.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
Kristine Keeney
gardener
Posts: 693
Location: South-southeast Texas, technically the "Golden Crescent", zone 9a
Heather Sharpe wrote:We had to bring one of the roosters inside to sleep last night. Our house is quite small, so I could hear him in his crate from my bed. He had been asleep for some time and as I was starting to drift off, I heard a small sound coming from the crate. He was tidbitting in his sleep!
I've witnessed the same rooster hanging out in the nest box, making a low clucking sound and scratching around. I assume this is just good rooster behavior. The funny part is that anytime he realizes I can see him, he walks out, puffs up and pretends like he wasn't in there.
I have heard geese mutter in their sleep, but had never heard a rooster do the same. What cool behavior!
He only puffs up like that so that you don't mistake his comforting clucking in the nest boxes for a lack of roosterliness. He's really tough and wants to make sure you understand. LOL XD
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
Kristine Keeney
gardener
Posts: 693
Location: South-southeast Texas, technically the "Golden Crescent", zone 9a
Pearl Sutton wrote:And my chickens that drove around in my truck looked like that too!
I needed the bugs on my property eaten, but couldn't leave them there alone, so the truck got a camper, that I made into a coop, and we went to work. I taught them to load up when it's was time to go back to the rental and I'd drive them back. Always fun to stop for gas, they would yell at people...
Chicken Tractor!
I love the Chicken Tractor!
Love the mobile coop, too. Back when we had a pick-up truck, it had a camper top, but we never used it for anything so cool. I have had reason to bemoan what could have been with all the creative ideas I can find on the internet for repurposing all sorts of things in the creation of critter housing.
Very clever and wonderfully creative! Plus, well-traveled chickens.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. - Thomas Sowell
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. - Albert Einstein
Looking at it pictures and found this one of these motherly hens. My kids named them "The Rockstar Sisters" because we couldn't tell them apart. We had over a dozen hens at the time and these three ladies were best friends. They even went broody at the same time sitting all three of them in a big pile on the eggs and successfully hatched out the babies together (with no fighting). They took care of all of the babies together too.
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Look closely in the center and you'll see one of the babies peeking out.
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Carla Burke wrote:That's awesome, Jenny! What breed are they?
They were barnyard mutts- some silkie and jersey giant mixed. lol! There was one more breed in there- I forget where the brown feathers came from... They unfortunately died a couple of years ago.
Jenny Wright wrote:
They were barnyard mutts- some silkie and jersey giant mixed. lol! There was one more breed in there- I forget where the brown feathers came from... They unfortunately died a couple of years ago.
Awww, I'm so sorry they're gone. They were mutts?? Identical mutts??? How does that even HAPPEN? And, identical mutts that were like the three musketeers! Wow!!
"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato
Willie Smits: Village Based Permaculture Approaches in Indonesia (video)
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