Chicken question

I've asked around a few forums, but I want to ask here because I know there are chicken farmers amongst us.

A week or so ago, one of our hens that stopped producing eggs months ago became very broody and was sitting in one of the boxes for days on end. We reached under her after quite a squabble and found a turkey egg. I guess one of the juvenile turkeys dropped it and didn't have the motivation to sit on it. Anyhow, has anyone ever seen a chicken brood a turkey egg before? She's been at it for a while and appears dedicated. She'll go out for a few minutes to peck the feed trough and get water, but then it's right back to the nest box.

ancona said:

I've asked around a few forums, but I want to ask here because I know there are chicken farmers amongst us.

A week or so ago, one of our hens that stopped producing eggs months ago became very broody and was sitting in one of the boxes for days on end. We reached under her after quite a squabble and found a turkey egg. I guess one of the juvenile turkeys dropped it and didn't have the motivation to sit on it. Anyhow, has anyone ever seen a chicken brood a turkey egg before? She's been at it for a while and appears dedicated. She'll go out for a few minutes to peck the feed trough and get water, but then it's right back to the nest box.

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Good broody hens are very valuable if you want to hatch more chickens. A broody hen will hatch just about any egg. I have seen guys use a good hen to care for their own eggs, other chicken eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs, ect. If this hen keeps this up, just keep giving her new eggs whenever the old ones hatch.

ancona said:

I've asked around a few forums, but I want to ask here because I know there are chicken farmers amongst us.

A week or so ago, one of our hens that stopped producing eggs months ago became very broody and was sitting in one of the boxes for days on end. We reached under her after quite a squabble and found a turkey egg. I guess one of the juvenile turkeys dropped it and didn't have the motivation to sit on it. Anyhow, has anyone ever seen a chicken brood a turkey egg before? She's been at it for a while and appears dedicated. She'll go out for a few minutes to peck the feed trough and get water, but then it's right back to the nest box.

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you haven't seen anything until your quail hatch a chicken egg.... :rotflmbo:

the chick is almost as big as the mother!

All I know is you can't make a chicken without breaking some eggs. :judge:

*Update*

Chicken Little is still on the egg. She's a hell of a brooder. So far this season we've gotten five new chicks. We're hoping for ten to twelve total so we can start broiling up the non -layers.

Color me jealous. I'm in an HOA. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah I'm not staying.

tomswifty said:

Color me jealous. I'm in an HOA. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah I'm not staying.

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will they let you have "birds that don't make noise" as our code reads? We started with 25 "mixed brown egg layers" from Murray McMurtury hatchery (sp), which # quickly exploded when the neighbors saw we had chickens and gave us theirs... but they don't sex them very well, five were roosters... the mexican neighbors white fighting cock ran away and came to live with our chickens, and attacked Bing every time she went to get eggs. One day she said she was going to kill it, so I got her a stump and bolo and I THOUGHT she was going to chop off its head, but instead she slooowwwwwly sawed off the birds head, it took a LONG time. Cars were slowing down to watch and I really thought someone was going to call the cops. I stewed it in the crockpot all day, but you still couldn't chew it so I gave it to the dogs...

No, common pets only. There's plenty of rabbits around so maybe I'll get the slingshot out.

Aaaaand it's a bouncing baby turkey!

Mother hen was squawking up a storm so we went over to see what the fuss was about. The last time they made this much noise was when a big old indigo snake got in the coop. Well, the turkey egg hatched! We're giving mother hen access to mash and crushed grasshoppers and it appears to be working well. It's funny as hell to think that this baby turkey is going to imprint on a chicken. This ought to make for some good comedy this winter.

tomswifty said:

Color me jealous. I'm in an HOA. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah I'm not staying.

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They dont allow this in town here. I am ok with that.

Penn said:

They dont allow this in town here. I am ok with that.

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wait till eggs are a dollar each, if you can get them....

Jay said:

wait till eggs are a dollar each, if you can get them....

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That was actually one of the arguments made before the county commission when we lobbied to make residential chickens legal. We can now legally have three hens on a residential property, but no roosters. A rooster can be brought in for purposed of fertilizing hens, but it must be taken out by nightfall. Violation of that rule results in the homeowner losing their right to keep chickens altogether.

On properties one acre or larger, you can keep as many as you like, but unless you are zoned agricultural or residential agricultural, no roosters.

The commission meeting got pretty rowdy because one woman commissioner kept spouting off about how she didn't want to see chicken coops in her neighborhood. She was pretty soundly crushed by the overflowing room full of chicken owners who reminded her that she didn't live in an unincorporated area, and since her city forbids residential chickens she wouldn't have to deal with them so she needed to mind her business. We also reminded her that we would remember her recalcitrance at the ballot box.:judge:

I live in town, our zoning/code says you are not allowed to have a bird that makes noise. Other fowl must have two square feet per animal in its coop. For about ten years, we had fifty chickens (and roosters). Before I got them, I talked to all my neighbors, to make sure the roosters wouldn't bother them. At the time, it was OK, the neighbors I have now would have called the police on me in a heartbeat. (Nevermind their incessantly barking dogs). I got rid of them when I awakened from the coma I was in, the crowing was driving me crazy. I do miss them. We had a serious fly problem; had to use those inverted fly traps and filled a gallon one every week. I don't miss that, but that was because we had to keep them cooped, I don't think we would have had that problem in the country. There are free range chickens all over town; my co-worker said this morning all those chickens I see in his neighborhood roost in the creek bed down the street from his house. The city shot several hundred of them, but there are still a lot. My Blackwater neighbor has fifty or sixty, they crow all the time. They don't bother me down the street like they did outside my bedroom window. I asked Bing the other day if she wanted to get some hens, but she doesn't care. Better we should live in the country I think.

Actually, the unincorporated areas that fringe most counties are usually good places to find an acre or two on the cheap. If you don't live in tornado alley or in the cross-hairs of hurricanes, a pre-manufactured home on a couple of acres can be a nice little homestead for a garden and a few birds. I have a friend in Texas that once brought in seventy five truck-loads of soil because "That damn caliche was like plowing concrete".

In addition to more room to spread out, a lot of counties have large expanses of agricultural zoned land, so a couple of acres on that and you get the bonus of not having to bother with building permits for pole barns and such.

ancona said:

Actually, the unincorporated areas that fringe most counties are usually good places to find an acre or two on the cheap. If you don't live in tornado alley or in the cross-hairs of hurricanes, a pre-manufactured home on a couple of acres can be a nice little homestead for a garden and a few birds. I have a friend in Texas that once brought in seventy five truck-loads of soil because "That damn caliche was like plowing concrete".

In addition to more room to spread out, a lot of counties have large expanses of agricultural zoned land, so a couple of acres on that and you get the bonus of not having to bother with building permits for pole barns and such.

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The first time I was married, I bought five acres and built my own house etc. This time I wanted a house in the town close to the schools (this was twenty years ago) so we bought a house seven blocks from the center of town (its a small town of 5000). We've raised three kids here; two are all grown and the third, (12) would RATHER live in the country. A good friend of mine has 400 acres right outside of town and has said we are always welcome to buy a few and build there (he says I and my family are pretty much the only people he/his family could stand to live close to). The land there is all rock and caliche and cedar; we trucked in some garden soil for them cause they couldn't grow a garden last spring. he planted a large garden that was moderately successful this past spring (not withstanding the goats and cows getting in and eating a bunch and the grasshoppers getting what the cows didn't). They are running some sheep and donkeys out there (the donkeys allegedly watch over the sheep). I say allegedly because coyotes still got three sheep. I've got a cache out there, and we have toyed with the idea of building out there, but I'm not as enthused as I was a few years ago. I've taken the stance that if things get THAT bad, then it isn't going to matter where you are. (barring perhaps being in a city). Also, we have developed a large circle of like-minded friends in every direction. One fellow is a retired lifer marine; he has a million dollar home at the very top of a mountain nearby with clear view for miles around. Everytime he's in the grocery store he reminds me to bring my boys, guns and rice in that order if things get bad. Bing wants to move in the country. Land around here is NOT cheap and small acreage is almost impossible to find. We could relocate somewhere else but all three kids have spent their entire lives either here (Burnet county, Tx. or in the Philippines) and don't want to move away. I'm OK with that. The one thing I'm worried about is water. There are five artesian wells within two blocks of my house, and I imagine they are going to be highly contested.