My Many Fast Failures – Part 2, by M.P.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)

A couple of months ago another hen went broody, and I decided to take advantage of this to have her hatch a clutch of eggs all from these hens and rooster. Her first clutch was eight eggs. I moved her and the eggs into a temporary nest, made from a cardboard box, in the cage I had used before to separate her from the flock a bit and protect her eggs from the other hens who might try to lay in that box. She was not happy about the move and repeatedly tried to return to the original, now empty, nest box. One mistake I made was using too small a box for her. It was the same size as the one I had used earlier, but this was a larger bird and it was too small for her. She was not at all happy with that nest and it showed.

She managed to get out of the cage one night and I found her in the morning in a regular nest box in the coop. I counted those eight eggs a loss since they would have chilled overnight, put five fresh eggs in a larger temporary nest box and closed her in securely so that she couldn’t get out of the cage. I worried that all of this hassle would break her broodiness, but I thank the Lord that it didn’t and she settled on the new clutch. Then the waiting began, at least three weeks maybe a bit longer.

This summer was fairly warm and very rainy. I don’t think the humidity dropped below 85% at any time during the three plus weeks she was on the nest, and most days it was in the 90-100% range. That may explain why none of those eggs hatched, even after 25 days with her on the nest since eggs need to be kept at about 70% humidity while the embryos are developing, though that is just a guess. In any event, even though I waited four extra days, none of those eggs hatched.

In real terms, this whole experiment cost me about four dozen eggs, maybe more, since I lost her production for over a month plus the eggs from both clutches. Right now, that is not a significant cost, but this failure could have been very costly later on if we were dependent on eggs for protein and barter.

Too, there is the longer-term cost of the loss of the replacement birds I had hoped to have. My birds are going into their third laying year and I expect to see production start dropping off more noticeably. Three-year-old hens lay at about 70%, down from the 80-90% of their first couple of years. The economics of this are fine for now, and should be for next year, too, but if my efforts next year (assuming any hen goes broody— not a given with modern breeds) fail, then it will be a much more serious problem and I will probably order another group of day-old chicks. Again, now is the time to have such a failure when we have alternatives. After things tank, it could be a much more serious issue.

One lesson I learned from this breed is that egg production is wildly variable between species. The Buffs gave us eggs even during the very short winter days, though very few. My Wyandotte girls laid no eggs for over 30 days including the entire month of December. I do not light my coop, preferring to let them have the winter rest as God designed them to do. Lighting would give me some eggs during the shortest days of the year and would increase the annual output, though I understand that it would decrease the effective laying life of the birds. As a result, I am experimenting with storing eggs in waterglass. I have about four dozen stored this way, to be used during our holiday baking and for regular eating when there is no production. I don’t yet know whether this will be a success, though I am fairly confident it will be from all I have seen.

Another area of learning is about chicken health. Overall my birds seem healthy, though I am dealing with two additional issues which could be serious problems in a later time. One is that one of the birds started pecking the back feathers off the others at night in the coop. I didn’t deal with this aggressively at first, being busy with other things, and this was a major mistake. While most of my birds have little or no problem with it, I have a few with big bald patches on their backs. I treat it by spraying Blu-Kote on their backs both for the medicinal value of it and to keep other birds from pecking at any bloody spots that may appear.

I should have done whatever was needed to identify the culprit and isolate her as soon as the problem appeared. It took me a while to figure out which bird it was, which is why the problem got so bad. When I did locate her—purely by chance as I caught her in the act one night when I went out to lock them up—I fostered her out to a neighbor who has an unused coop and a daughter who loves chickens. I am hoping that the problem hasn’t spread in the flock and that the birds will be able to heal now that she is gone.

A bigger issue that has infected much of the flock this year is bumblefoot. Bumblefoot is a staph infection that gets in chicken’s feet when they get a cut. I had one bird with this problem last year, and I successfully treated it with a nightly spray of Veterycin. Their roosts were a bit high for such heavy birds, I think, and she injured her foot jumping down. I lowered the roosts and that seems to have helped everyone.

This year, however, their fenced-in area was almost constantly wet, at times almost a quagmire in places. I learned later that this is ideal breeding ground for bumblefoot and many of my birds got it, one or two pretty badly. One was so bad that I had to treat it very aggressively, and perform a bit of surgery to clear it out. She is now separated from the flock, getting a daily change of bandage with treatment. She seems to be on the mend but I won’t know the final outcome for some time yet, and the problem still exists with the rest of the flock, though it isn’t getting worse and seems to be improving for the rest as well. Again, this is something I can fairly easily deal with now, but in an uncertain future could well have cost me some birds if I couldn’t get the supplies I needed.

Chickens aren’t the only area where I have made a whole litany of mistakes, some pretty dumb. I won’t make this any longer by going into them all. I wish I could write a post telling you how successful I have been with wheat growing, permaculture, gardening generally, trying to get a walnut tree from walnuts, etc., but I can’t. I have made many mistakes and they equal if not outnumber my successes. The reality is that they will for those of us learning by doing. That is the way of these things. All I can do is encourage everyone to start now if you haven’t already.

Figure out what things you need to be doing but aren’t yet, and get started. You will make mistakes, too. Thomas Edison is supposed to have said, with regard to his mistakes, “Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.” These are often hard, but very valuable lessons. Learn them now, while there is time to learn them and time then to learn what does work!