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What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs?
- dec0dedab0de 9y agolooks like the story stopped just before answering the question in the title
- lsaferite 9y agoYeah, this is why I came here as well. I was hoping that maybe someone posted the answer to the question I didn't know I wanted an answer for until I saw the article.
- colanderman 9y agoI'm pretty sure they eat them so as not to waste nutrients.
- tomjen3 9y agoparents had backyard chickens for years. Unfertilized, or even fertilized eggs as the was majority of modern chicken aren't going to lay on them until they hatch, are either eaten or ignored.
- gwbas1c 9y agoDoes the hen just try to sit on the eggs and give up at some point?
- jackhack 9y agoIt depends on the particular bird, but some species will sit on eggs, even to the point of their own starvation. "Broody" is the term -- referring to a general nature to sit on and nurture eggs, working themselves into an almost hypnotic state. Chinese Silkies are known for this. Buff Orpingtons are also good "hatchers." I have to go in and collect eggs, and pet on my birds to rouse them from their broody state, then force them out of the henhouse to go eat & drink. Otherwise she'll literally sit there on those eggs all day & night. After a while, the hen might break the eggs and eat them. A way to train against this is to 1) never let it happen (remove eggs promptly) so they don't develop a taste for eggs or 2) give them golf balls to sit on. Birds go through phases. Very broody for a few months, then disinterested, then back to broody, eating eggs for a while, ignoring them, etc.
- marcosdumay 9y agoThey do give up shortly after some eggs hatch, what is a problem if you mix eggs with different maturity. Some hens learn to eat the uncollected eggs, what is also a problem because they don't know beforehand what eggs will hatch either, and start eating them at random. If the eggs are left there, some animal will inevitably come and eat them. What is also a problem, because they will learn there are eggs there, and will not care to only look for abandoned ones. Overall, it's not healthy to not collect the unfertilized eggs.
- mac01021 9y agoI think this probably mostly answers the remaining part of the question: http://articles.extension.org/pages/65600/what-happens-to-unfertilized-eggs-in-the-wild http://articles.extension.org/pages/65600/what-happens-to-un... But really I posted this hoping some resident of hacker news who grew up on a poultry farm will come along and tell us what's what.
- msisk6 9y agoActually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is fertilized or not. Most will just lay and leave. Some go broody and will sit on the eggs until they hatch. Some hens will sit on the eggs (and collect any nearby eggs and sit on a pile of them) until they die if they don't hatch. We have about 100 birds and at any given time two or three will be broody. We collect the eggs everyday so sometimes the broody hen will just sit there on nothing or on one of our "fake" eggs (we put fake eggs in the places we want the hens to lay their eggs). We'll remove the broody hens from the coop several times a day until we break them of the habit. That usually works. Occasionally we'll have snakes get into the coop and eat eggs. If the snake gets a porcelain fake egg that pretty much the end of that snake eventually. Rattlesnakes are more difficult, but we've gotten pretty good had removing those, too. Our big problem this year is hawks (our chickens free range). We've lost about 20 birds this year just to hawks. Just this last weekend hawks killed three (flew away with two and mostly maimed a third I had to cull) and one hen got away missing her tail feathers and received some deep cuts our vet stitched up. She got away because our dominate rooster attacked and killed the hawk after her.
- gadders 9y agoIn the UK, the big problem is foxes. We have an electric fence and automated coop door closer now. We also have a guy that enjoys shooting and roams the fields round our house shooting them.
- frankus 9y agoI've been thinking of building an automated coop door closer. Can you link me to some more info on yours?
- msisk6 9y agoWe're been using this one the past few years: https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Chicken-Coop-Door-Standard/dp/B01EN3O4MY https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Chicken-Coop-Door-Standard/... It has a solar panel and rechargeable battery and you program in your lat/long and optional + or - times for the door to remain open or close around sunrise and sunset. It works well. Of course, you could hack something up with a micro-controller to do the same thing rather easily.
- stuartaxelowen 9y agoThey eat them.
- matheweis 9y agoOnly if you don't collect ethe eggs quickly or you've been feeding the chickens shells...
- msisk6 9y agoYeah, you don't want that. We cull the hens that start to eat eggs.
- jlebrech 9y agoit's how hens are supposed to get their calcium back. without that they have brittle bones like a kfc drumstick.
- have_faith 9y ago>This is an edited answer from What does a hen do with her unfertilised eggs? which originally appeared on Quora Is the Independent sourcing editorial from Quora now? I assume when you answer a question on Quora you give up all rights to the content. I wonder what sort of arrangement they have.
- scandox 9y agoI would cross the street not to have to say 'a hen' or 'an hen'. Both make my tongue trip. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/629/when-should-i-use-a-versus-an-in-front-of-a-word-beginning-with-the-letter-h https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/629/when-should-...
- iamthepieman 9y agoWe currently have 26 five day old chicks in a cardboard box in our mud room. We are raising them to lay and, eventually, brood so hopefully I'll be able to answer this question in about 9-12 months or so. This is the first time I've ever raised layers though 20 years ago as a teenager, my brother and I raised 100 birds every spring for the family freezer. An interesting thing about the young chicks, even at 3 days old they were acting exactly like adult birds- making dust baths, establishing a pecking order and even attempting to roost though the only thing elevated in their box is their feeder.
- kbutler 9y agoWe've done this a few times - both incubating from eggs and receiving chicks mail order. Incubating and seeing the eggs hatch is awesome, but it's also pretty fun to pick up a cheeping box at the post office! However, it won't be very long until you want them OUT of the mudroom ASAP. The dust and smell from poo and feathers and whatever else gets bad quickly. Not a nice addition to breakfast. Note that I do seem to be more irritated by it than other family members who like pets more.
- Diederich 9y ago> ... but it's also pretty fun to pick up a cheeping box at the post office! One of the highlights of the years we lived in an extremely rural county in the midwest was the yearly call from our rural post office. This is exactly what was said when we picked up the phone: "Diederich? Postmaster here. Your birds are at the post office. Thanks, bye."
- iamthepieman 9y agoPicking up a madly chirping box at 7A.M. from the post office is certainly a magical experience. And yes, as soon as I juggle my cats out of the basement, the chicks are moving down there.
- caio1982 9y agoI don't understand why you were being downvoted but please write a report somewhere and post it here next year, and good luck with the chicks! Just remember to take good care of them, and provide a decent, clean, natural environment for the animals while they live.
- wycx 9y agoThey get off them and then a crow swoops in and steals them. It was never a sure thing as to whether we would get our backyard chickens daily eggs or if the crow would.
- gadders 9y agoLooking at our 20 hens, they typically ignore them once they have been laid. The only exception to this is if the hen has become broody, then they will sit on them virtually 24 hours a day trying to hatch them. The chickens become very docile when they're broody.
- rotexo 9y agothat's interesting, I always got the feeling that hens were more aggressive when broody. When one of my family's chickens was broody, I made chirping noises after forcing her out of her nesting box, and she made a loud clucking noise and charged at me (I assume because she thought I had her chicks)
- icantdrive55 9y agoMy deceased Cockatiel (Sarafina) would sit on her eggs for about a week. After a week she would start to lighten up, and move around. I would always check for embryo, but there was never any. (After she abandoned them) There was a male Cockateil was in the cage, but she wanted noting to do with him--Ben. Ben tried for years to warm up to her, but she would just shoo him away. Ben was in the Freind Zone, I guess? Ben is still the sweetest bird. I think he's over 40 years old? She must have laid over 400 eggs. She died unexpectedly. I sometimes think because she laid so many eggs. I did give her a enhanced nutritional diet. I remember a vet saying he could give her a shot to stop the egg laying. I just didn't think it was physically taxing on her.
- camtarn 9y agoAnd for a bit more detail on what actually happens inside a chicken while it's forming the egg: https://vimeo.com/86122048 https://vimeo.com/86122048 Birds are surprisingly complex biological factories - especially the bits of their internal 'production line' which rotate the egg-to-be to twist membranes into shock-absorber-like suspension structures for the yolk.
- gadders 9y ago//Offtopic - we've just started to raise 8 goslings, and they are completely different temperament to geese. Much friendlier and less flighty.
- gadders 9y agoI meant different to chickens, of course. Bloody work interrupting my posting.