Kendra is a Dominique hen, a fairly rare breed of chicken. Dominiques are also considered the oldest North American chicken and were present during many a wagon trek west for their ability to scavenge all the food and water they needed to survive and lay eggs. Dominiques are also known for being quite docile and easy to handle, even the roosters, which is probably another reason they were a popular choice. However, slowly over the years, production hens like the Rhode Island Red and Barred Plymouth Rock became more popular and the Dominique went by the wayside, with numbers dwindling fast as fewer and fewer households kept them. They all but became extinct during the switch in the fifties from keeping chickens to simply going to the grocery store to buy eggs thanks to yet another breed, the Leghorn, which is the breed that produces a majority of those generic, uniform white eggs we see lining your grocers refrigerated section.
Anyway, two years ago this July, a friend of ours from church had a hen hatch three chicks, and we took him up on his offer to take them. Of course, two of the three would be roosters, because that’s how we roll, but the third was a Dominique hen we named Kendra. There was also a Dominique rooster whose name changed from Anya to Xander at that realization, but when we decided to get rid of the other rooster, Spike, a mean little mixed Polish bantam, we also got rid of Xander… a decision we later regretted. Even though we didn’t want roosters, Xander was true to form, a beautiful Dominique cockerel, who was certain to become a handsome cock. And when Kendra went broody last year, we realized she could have been hatching out more little Dominique chickies had we not given Xander back to our friend at church, who later found a home for him. Funnily, Spike found a home right away to a guy who wanted a really mean little rooster to protect his flock.
So a few days ago, I notice that Kendra has not been out of the henhouse for a while, even when the chickens are out free ranging, which is quite odd, as she can be pretty vocal when we don’t let them out to forage around for bugs and weeds. I opened the nest box door to collect eggs and see her sitting on one of the three nests. I pet her and she purred and I find that quite odd, but figure maybe she was just anxious last year when she went broody and would peck you away from her. I try to move her off the nest, but she wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t see any eggs under her, so I collect the ones in the other two boxes and leave her be, figuring I’ll just put her back into the ferret cage we put her in last year to break her of her broodiness. Then another thought hit me… the feed store will be getting two breeds of chicks that I wanted to get, and if I build a simple brooder coop, I could leave her in that and slip in the two chicks when they arrive!
I talk it over with my partner, who suggests looking on craigslist.com for anyone with fertile eggs our broody hen could hatch, and I remind him we’ll end up with all roosters because that is our luck and inform him of my idea to just slip in the chicks next week. He’d much rather have her hatch eggs. And so the next day, the rain has finally let up and I decide to open up the nest box door to check on Kendra and notice a rather foul odor coming from her behind, and see that she has poop smeared all over. Great, she has pasty butt. So I close up the box, go inside and grab a large wad of paper towels, wet most of them with hot water, and walk back out to the coop to clean her up. As I’m cleaning her bottom, I see that she doesn’t have pasty butt, as her vent is quite clear and is contracting like she is about to lay an egg. This alone makes me wonder two things: Did an egg break on the way down, and am I going to have to reach in and pull out all the broken shell inside her vent? I decide to not think about it and dig in a little to feel around, but I don’t feel any broken shell pieces, so I continue cleaning her up. When I’ve finished, I set her down on the ground, figuring I’ll let out the other girls to free range for a bit, supervised of course so they don’t destroy the vegetable garden or newly planted flowers in pots on the deck, and she squats like she’s going to crap and out pops an egg!
After laying an egg, she walked over to the grassy area, pulled up a worm and started munching on grass. This is not broody behavior, and figured she must have just been a little eggbound and my gentle massaging while cleaning her bum released it. I let the other girls out and keep an eye on Kendra, who seems to be fine. Figuring that was probably all her problem was, I walk back to the house and wash my hands diligently, scrubbing with a massive amount of soap and hot water until they are raw and I need to reapply lotion to keep them from getting chapped and bleedy. By the time I got back outside to arm myself with the hose to spray them out of areas I don’t want them to be, Kendra had disappeared again. I check in the nest box she had been, and sure enough, there she was again! So maybe, even though she just laid an egg, she is broody after all!
I decide to leave her be and sit on the deck in one of the patio chairs, hose in hand ready to spray them if they jump onto the deck, or make their way to the vegetable garden in a frenzy to dig up the strawberries we just planted. After an hour of that, I locked the girls all back up into the coop and went inside. Kendra is still on the nest box. A couple hours later, I notice that she has rejoined the others in the run and is scratching around looking for nummy treats as she usually does. Curious? So, armed with the egg basket, I walk back out to the coop, open up the nest box and to my surprise there where she had been laying was what looked like a completely shell-less egg, not even a membrane to hold it all together! I grab the straw nesting material holding it and throw it into the composter before putting fresh straw back into the box and collecting the other eggs.
Since then she’s seemed fine, and has laid another egg, so instead of a broody hen as I was almost hoping just to have an excuse to get Speckled Sussex and Silver Laced Wyandotte chicks and experience what it would be like to have a hen actually raise the chicks herself, as Dominiques are notoriously excellent parents, both hens and roosters, but alas, she probably was stopped up with the one egg that popped out after cleaning her and the other one that was on its way down never formed a shell because the first wouldn’t come out. Oh well, chances are she will go broody later, and when that happens, we’ll reevaluate what we want to do about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment