Jack

Jack

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

In Which I Commit A Chicken Faux Pas

So the day after we seperate Yoya, our broody mama, from her 6 week old chicks, I go out to make sure she's OK. It's 100 degrees and yesterday afternoon she had been getting bullied a bit by the other chickens upon her return to the flock, which made her hide in one of the nest boxes. I want to make sure she isn't continuing to hide and risking dying from the heat.

Uh huh--sure enough, I look and find her in one of the nest boxes, huddled down. I try to shoo her out.

She ain't movin'. I shoo more energetically, pushing her towards the opening. Nope. OK, she needs to drink and get OUT of there. I end up grabbing her none too delicately and lifting her out. I place her outside the row of nest boxes, but damned if she doesn't just instantly try and climb into ANOTHER one.

Dang chicken! I scoop her up before she can and carry her out into the run, as I do so she's practically lying in my arms. I set her down next to the waterer so she can drink. She sort of hunkers down, fluffed up, right where I place her and doesn't want to move. I'm worried. I gently prod the backs of her legs in an effort to get her to take a step or two.

Suddenly she stands erect and walks away a few steps...
...and in her place is a lovely, large, fresh egg. Oh lord, I interrupted her while she was trying to lay, poor thing!

I grabbed up the egg and spent the next few minutes following her around, showing it to her, praising it/her and apologizing profusely. Yoya just kind of stared at me in a witheringly disappointed way--like I shouldn't be left alone to be roaming about unsupervised--and walked away.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hello! Please feel free to leave me a comment!