3 ms·

Actually 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 e

by msisk6 9y ago

Actually 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 ago
In 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 ago
  I've been thinking of building an automated coop door closer. Can you link me to some more info on yours?
  - msisk6 9y ago
    We'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.
  - gadders 9y ago
    We use the previous model of these [1]. Not cheap, but very reliable. [1] https://www.chickenguard.com/ https://www.chickenguard.com/
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> our dominate rooster attacked and killed the hawk after her. Damn, I didn't know that could happen.
- jobu 9y ago
  Roosters can be mean as hell. I used to help my cousins with their chickens and we would always have to lure and trap the rooster before we could go near the hens.
  - msisk6 9y ago
    Luckily our dominate rooster is tolerant of people. Roosters that show aggression toward us get culled.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
iamthepieman 9y ago
What do you do with all your eggs and how many eggs per day do you get per 100 birds? We are fortunate that we don't have a snake problem. We do have red and golden hawks though and they fly around after our neighbors chickens. They haven't lost one to hawks yet though as they have a large guard dog which seems to be effective.
- msisk6 9y ago
  I don't know the exact number; about half of those 100 birds are new this spring and haven't started laying en mass yet. My wife tells me we're currently getting about 3 dozen per day. I sell quite a few at work and my daughter, a vet tech, also sells at her work. If we get too many we hand them out as gifts for the FedEx guy, our Doctor, etc. The gifts usually guarantee repeat business after folks get a taste of fresh eggs. We recently just got a few puppies from a local animal shelter that we're acclimating to the chickens. We hope that'll cut down on predator loss.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    3 dozen per day sound about right for the number of birds laying. My parents had upward of 60 birds; I don't know how many actually laid eggs (this was 25+ years ago when I was a kid). What my parents did was gather the eggs for the day, wash them, then put them in empty 3 lb coffee cans, put a label on the cans with the date, then refrigerate them. My mom would then sell the eggs (80 cents a dozen) for spending money (she was a stay-at-home mom, dad worked for the county doing road maintenance/construction). She would also separate out the browns from the whites (I think she sold the browns at $1.20 per dozen). Occasionally we'd get a blue or green shell egg, but those weren't sold. Any not sold after 30 days (IIRC) were thrown out (or maybe put into the slop for our occasional pig, or fed to the dogs - depending on if they were still "ok" enough for that of course). We'd eat some as well, but we had so many chickens that we couldn't eat anywhere near enough to keep the excess from forming, so selling them was the best thing to do with them.
deathanatos 9y ago
> Actually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is fertilized or not. I hate to nitpick you here, but the person you're replying to is correct, and it's really not at the beginning of the article. Like you reiterate, the article states that the hen doesn't know — which is sensible (how would the hen know?), but doesn't answer our question: "What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs?" The article does answer the question for the case of a non-brooding hen: the hen doesn't brood, so not much of anything. But I think a lot of us were more interested in the case of a brooding hen, and the article then tells us about the process for a fertilized egg, which, while interesting, doesn't answer the question. (I would guess that most of us that were raised in more urban areas believe that most or all hens brood. I did not know that some did and some didn't, for example.) You, and other commenters in the thread, have thankfully given us closure w.r.t. the question by posting, though.

by msisk6 9y ago

gadders 9y ago

In 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 ago
I've been thinking of building an automated coop door closer. Can you link me to some more info on yours?
- msisk6 9y ago
  We'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.
- gadders 9y ago
  We use the previous model of these [1]. Not cheap, but very reliable. [1] https://www.chickenguard.com/ https://www.chickenguard.com/

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> our dominate rooster attacked and killed the hawk after her. Damn, I didn't know that could happen.

jobu 9y ago
Roosters can be mean as hell. I used to help my cousins with their chickens and we would always have to lure and trap the rooster before we could go near the hens.
- msisk6 9y ago
  Luckily our dominate rooster is tolerant of people. Roosters that show aggression toward us get culled.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

iamthepieman 9y ago

What do you do with all your eggs and how many eggs per day do you get per 100 birds? We are fortunate that we don't have a snake problem. We do have red and golden hawks though and they fly around after our neighbors chickens. They haven't lost one to hawks yet though as they have a large guard dog which seems to be effective.

msisk6 9y ago
I don't know the exact number; about half of those 100 birds are new this spring and haven't started laying en mass yet. My wife tells me we're currently getting about 3 dozen per day. I sell quite a few at work and my daughter, a vet tech, also sells at her work. If we get too many we hand them out as gifts for the FedEx guy, our Doctor, etc. The gifts usually guarantee repeat business after folks get a taste of fresh eggs. We recently just got a few puppies from a local animal shelter that we're acclimating to the chickens. We hope that'll cut down on predator loss.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  3 dozen per day sound about right for the number of birds laying. My parents had upward of 60 birds; I don't know how many actually laid eggs (this was 25+ years ago when I was a kid). What my parents did was gather the eggs for the day, wash them, then put them in empty 3 lb coffee cans, put a label on the cans with the date, then refrigerate them. My mom would then sell the eggs (80 cents a dozen) for spending money (she was a stay-at-home mom, dad worked for the county doing road maintenance/construction). She would also separate out the browns from the whites (I think she sold the browns at $1.20 per dozen). Occasionally we'd get a blue or green shell egg, but those weren't sold. Any not sold after 30 days (IIRC) were thrown out (or maybe put into the slop for our occasional pig, or fed to the dogs - depending on if they were still "ok" enough for that of course). We'd eat some as well, but we had so many chickens that we couldn't eat anywhere near enough to keep the excess from forming, so selling them was the best thing to do with them.

deathanatos 9y ago

> Actually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is fertilized or not. I hate to nitpick you here, but the person you're replying to is correct, and it's really not at the beginning of the article. Like you reiterate, the article states that the hen doesn't know — which is sensible (how would the hen know?), but doesn't answer our question: "What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs?" The article does answer the question for the case of a non-brooding hen: the hen doesn't brood, so not much of anything. But I think a lot of us were more interested in the case of a brooding hen, and the article then tells us about the process for a fertilized egg, which, while interesting, doesn't answer the question. (I would guess that most of us that were raised in more urban areas believe that most or all hens brood. I did not know that some did and some didn't, for example.) You, and other commenters in the thread, have thankfully given us closure w.r.t. the question by posting, though.