You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

To prepare for the hatching of the eggs, we ("we" meaning Dionne) set up a separate enclosure within the existing chicken run---a cage within a cage, if you will. Apparently, other hens might be rough with the newborn chicks and the roosters may flat out kill them. The top level of our bucket nest structure was only held in place by its own weight which made it easy to relocate to the new enclosure, broody hen and all. Below you see the two roosters curious and desperate to get into the restricted area.

For now, our sick (but nearly recovered) hen Chewhair will share this space. In fact, when broody Beach Bunny got up to stretch her legs, Chewhair took over the incubating for a few minutes.

We also got a quick peek at the eggs to see if any were cracked or rotten.


You can see here that we marked them initially to make sure that no new eggs were added to the clutch which would make it hard to track hatchling schedules. We found out that using a regular pencil is better than a Sharpie because the eggs are indeed porous...you live and you learn.

Broody Time

Since we have lost (sometimes quite literally) a few hens over the past year, we decided to let some hens go broody in hopes of baby chicks this summer. We left some eggs in the coop for a few days and several hens took turns sitting during the day, until Beach Bunny, a buff orpington, was the first to commit to an overnight stay (they normally all go up on their wooden branches in the coop to roost). Beach Bunny is currently sitting on about six eggs of various breeds, and we have marked them in case other hens decide to squeeze in and lay new ones. If the 21-day cycle is accurate, and the eggs were fertilized by one of our roosters, then we should have some new additions to the family around Friday, July 18th. While Beach Bunny squawks in defense of her nest, and has puffed herself up practically filling an entire 5 gallon nesting box, we still need to move her away from the rest of the flock so that the other hens won't go broody (which means egg production slows or even stops!) and so that the newly hatched chicks won't be subject to harm from other chickens. She seems to get off the nest periodically for food and water, but we've been bringing her water and fresh greens which she seems to appreciate.

Not Your Typical Bucket o' Chicken

In an effort to make more use of the limited space inside our wire-hoop chicken coop, we've replaced the deteriorating waxed cardboard boxes (which can't be recycled) with eight 5-gallon plastic buckets. We modified the buckets by removing the handles and cutting the lids a little less than half-way across to keep bedding material from falling out, yet still allowing enough space for the hen ingress and egress. We then nailed a small strip of wood to the cut edge of each lid to eliminate the sharp edge and provide a comfortable step. The base of each bucket was then screwed to a wide plank of plywood in two rows of four which stack neatly and are surprisingly stable considering they aren't tied down. We then filled each bucket with pine shavings to complete this modular-style nesting box that can be easily moved and/or cleaned. We'll let you know if the chickens like it. Click here for more photos of the bucket chicken condo.