live's egg is indeed getting darker, and more olive green! As you can see in this picture, I have white eggs to help compare the color and shade of Olive's eggs. The first egg after starting to lay again is very light and has a blue/green tint. The second egg is darker, but still has a bluish tint to it. Now, this is day three of laying after her bought with broodiness, and her egg is finally getting an olive green tone. I have NO idea why this is happening, but it is interesting.
Date Line: May 24, 2014 live's egg is indeed getting darker, and more olive green! As you can see in this picture, I have white eggs to help compare the color and shade of Olive's eggs. The first egg after starting to lay again is very light and has a blue/green tint. The second egg is darker, but still has a bluish tint to it. Now, this is day three of laying after her bought with broodiness, and her egg is finally getting an olive green tone. I have NO idea why this is happening, but it is interesting. Olive's First Egg 1st and 2nd egg post broodiness Today's egg Yep, it looks like we are back to pigment normalcy. So far she isn't showing any signs of being broody, and the rest of the girls are still laying eggs, except for Butterdud of course. I think I'm going to get 3 more hens. I re-read the ordinance regarding keeping chickens for L.A. county and it appears that I can have as many chickens as I can house healthfully. For me, that would be no more than 8. We'll see, I might get a couple of easter eggers, and my husband wants to get a chicken for himself so he can name it what ever he wants....oh dear! You may also like to read...
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Date Line May 22, 2014 nother day has gone by and here is today's egg from Olive. As you can see, it's getting darker, but it is still a bit bluish rather than her usual olive green egg. What gives? At least it is getting darker. She was also a little clingy around the nest after she laid this egg. Uh no, I hope she isn't thinking of going broody again so soon! I thought we had an understanding. Anyway, it is still a very pretty color egg, just not the olive green I expected to keep receiving. Hopefully tomorrows egg will be darker still. live FINALLY laid an egg today! After 11 agonizing (for me) days of being eggless, and 3 of those 11 days spent being broody, the spell has been broken at last. Now I can look forward to receiving her pretty olive green eggs again. YAY! Oh joy! But wait a minute... what's this? It appears that her long awaited egg seems to be a different color now, it appears to be more blue and less green. I hope this will right itself, don't get me wrong, I like the bluish egg, but I purchased an olive egger not an Easter egger. See what I mean when you compare her first egg and this recent one? It's definitely got more blue in it. If you look carefully, there is an olive green spot on her bluish egg, so her next egg may resume its characteristic olive green color. I hope. At any rate, Olive is laying once more, and hopefully, she will not be broody ever again! Did you hear that Olive? NO MORE BROODINESS! I think she got the message. Other Chicken Chat Articles:
Last week I went through a crisis of sorts. My favorite little hen (Olive) had taken to the nesting box. So, to me it appeared that she had separated herself from the flock. Oh no!-- as a flocking animal that can only mean one thing, she was sick! Not wanting to jump headlong into the deep end of the pool of wrong conclusions, I picked her up and checked her vent, and what I saw didn't assuage my fears. There appeared to be a mixture of clear and cloudy discharge. Well, that can't be good! My heart sank all the way down to my bare feet as they hit the bottom of the pool of panic. Sorry, but no photo was taken of my hen's hiney, as that was the last thing on my mind at the moment. I had NO idea what this meant, and as a rookie chicken owner I did what most of us newbies do besides panic, I sat in front of my computer and consulted Google. Looking For Help On The WebI reasoned that she wasn't egg bound because she had laid an egg the day before, and she laid again that afternoon. What a relief! And that also meant no egg was busted in her innards since the newly laid egg was free from any sticky yellow goo. Whew! Two down but a zillion other possibilities loomed large. After what seemed like hours of harried Google searching, I came across the frightening possibility that Olive might have something called vent gleet. What in the wide wide world of sports is vent gleet? This horrid sounding condition is a fungal infection brought on by an imbalance of good and bad naturally occurring bacteria, caused by stress (such as extreme heat like we've been having here in So.Cal. lately) or even by a sour crop. Sour crop is a whole other story that I hope to avoid telling, but you can certainly research that on your own. Basically, if your chicken has a sour crop, chances are it also has vent gleet and that means you aren't taking proper care of your chickens dietary needs (face palm). I really had NO idea if she had any of this for sure, but I was for sure overwhelmed by the process of figuring it all out, and then all of the treatments seemed as varied as the symptoms, and some were even contradictory. MORE STRESS! I mean come on - - earlier in the week I had to bury my beloved cat Pepper who was mowed down by an anonymous midnight motorist, I was in the process of preparing to cater a tea party with 36 guests, and now my favorite chicken was sick because of my possible dietary negligence. But rather than admit that, I was totally willing to think that I might possibly be cursed, yeah, or the old idiom of when it rains it pours was in effect also crossed my frantic mind. Anyway, in regards to Google searches, let me just say that it is very hard to diagnose a disease via Google searches. Do you know why? Because there are a lot of diseases that have the same symptoms, and an inexperienced person has no way of knowing other possible signs to look for, because not all of the symptoms apply, or some are not listed on the site, and the experts aren't there to see exactly what is going on. And now my thoughts concerning chicken expert websites... dear reader, I don't know about you but I have found that a lot of these chicken experts are relatively difficult to get a hold of especially in the midst of your crisis, and they don't answer many of the questions they receive regardless of how frivolous, or serious they may be. Now why do you suppose that is? Because they are most likely busy with their own daily lives, or busy with their own chicken issues, or maybe they don't know the answer to your question so they ignore it, or maybe they are busy writing some more expert articles where they won't be answering many of your newbie questions any time soon due to the afore mentioned reasons. Sorry dear reader, but they simply don't have time to hold our hands through every one of our newbie chicken crises. I had to quickly come to grips with the reality that I was pretty much on my own-- *gasp* Poor Olive! More STRESS! Yes dear reader, I had to suck it up for the sake of my little chicken, and pray for guidance, because my little Olive sure wasn't going to tell me what was wrong, and as a domesticated bird, she depends on me for her health and well being. (Oh Lord... HELP!... and please give me strength! Amen.) Then miraculously, guidance is what I got! Gee, thanks Lord for being available 24/7/365, and thank you for not blocking me from your heavenly forum! As it turned out, for some reason and unbeknownst to me, I started to search out the signs of chicken broodiness and B-I-N-G-O! Olive didn't have vent gleet like I had first feared, she has been trying to hatch eggs! And thanks to Lisa and her website Fresh Eggs Daily, I learned how to put a stop to this unnecessary and potentially harmful behavior. Unnecessary because I don't have a rooster to sire any chicks, so no matter how long Olive sits on those eggs, they won't be hatching any time soon. Potentially harmful because a broody hen doesn't eat, drink, or subsequently poop hardly at all while sitting on a nest for up to three weeks. THREE WEEKS! That means no eggs are being laid, and harvesting eggs is the whole reason why I have chickens. And you know what all of that other stuff like not eating and drinking can lead too...a visit from the feathery Grim Reaper. And so, I had to get Olive to"snap out of it" and fast, because apparently, broodiness is also contagious. Contagious? Yes, contagious! What To DoAccording to many chicken experts out there, broodiness might be contagious in that this mother hen behavior is catchy, not that it is brought on by germs. There also seems to be a strong inclination to this behavior in certain breeds. Which is fine if you are a breeder who wants to avoid the use of incubators to hatch chicks, but not fine if you want to collect eggs for daily consumption. To prevent the spread of this mother hen syndrome, if possible, separate your broody birdy from the rest of the flock with the use of a wire dog, or rabbit cage. Just don’t make a nest in the cage, because the idea here is to have air circulate and cool her under carriage down which should reset her maternal clock back to laying hen, not crazed mother hen. And of course provide her with fresh water and feed daily. And it just occured to me that I need to let her out for her dust bath, then its back to lock up. There are other various methods of dealing with this natural behavior, but this is the one I'm going with for now, and the other methods such as having the bird sit in a cold water bath doesn't work for everyone, according to other experts. So how long will it take for her to get over this? Your guess is as good as any chicken expert's. I have read estimates that range from a couple of days to never. NEVER! How's that for covering your bases? As for me, I'm just going to wait until I see an egg in the crate with Olive ignoring it, and then I'll know she's cured. Or until she stops ruffling her feathers at me when I come in the run. Until then, she's a jail bird like the Buff Orpington pictured below: Well, I'll give her a week before I start the cycle of panic once more. Then I might try the cold water spa treatment. Maybe. I think that will be my last resort. What I've LearnedThrough this process of a potential medical crisis turning into a completely natural yet annoying situation, I've learned some things about vent gleet, sour crop, how prevention is worth a pound of cure, broody hen behavior, and I've even learned a thing or two about myself. When the chips are down and I'm stressed out, I've discovered that I can push past all that anxiety and rely on the Lord to help me get through any farm animal trial, or tribulation. Ooorah! And incidentally, I've also learned that I've been blocked from commenting on the Chicken Chick's® website. Yes, dear reader in my time of need, I was rejected by the Chicken Chick®. I think I've only commented once on her site in regards to her article on using sand in the chicken run and coop. Apparently she, or her website mediator can't take criticism, or "negative" comments, but that's another story soon to be written. Anyway, here are some broody symptoms that I've encountered plus some others that I've seen on chicken expert websites (including the thin-skinned Chicken Chick's® website) -
Yes, I may like to poke fun at the 'experts,' but I also like to cut the 'experts' some slack, especially the ones who know they don't know it all, and give responsible recommendations. Every situation isn't the same and every hen is her own bird regardless of breed traits. To generally lump all things into a one size fits all package is living in a fantasy land for the most part, and is not being firmly grounded in reality. The fact is that not all remedies work for all birds when broodiness strikes, so I'll keep you posted. P.S. I don't block 'negative' commentators, or those who give criticism, constructive or otherwise. Why? Because I don't care for the "yes man" mentality. However, I will change any four letter words to symbols, since I would like to keep this site as near to the "G" rating as possible.
P.P.S. To help me save time, it would be nice if you did the symbol thing for me, if you have a penchant for using those colorful metaphors ; ) |
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