Well, not really. In truth, I am a fairly hardy person. I only get really depressed when I don’t get enough sleep and last night I went to bed at about 8:30pm, so I surely got enough sleep.
But ANYWAY, I am sort of down about my chickens. I think the thing is that the chickens have represented pure joy for me thus far. I have only felt enthusiastic and excited about them and suddenly all that good feeling has been tainted by the awful egg eaters. And it isn’t that it is gross so much, because I have gotten over that. It is that it is such a huge waste of time and energy to feed these birds if they aren’t even going to give me eggs.
On that note, things are sort of looking up. I am collecting eggs more often, and I put three dumby eggs in the nest. The thought is that if they try to peck them and find that nothing happens, maybe they will give up. I am also trying to let Agnes off her nest once a day (she is the one brooding the now EIGHT eggs). None have disappeared since Friday, although she did seem to break one at the end of last week. I don’t think that was purposeful though as she was still sitting on it, not eating it and it looked crushed rather than pecked. Maybe she is trying to tell me that she can only handle 8 eggs under her. Let’s hope we make it another two weeks!
I read somewhere that when you remove a chicken from the flock, you kick it down in the pecking order. Wow, that sure is true. When I take Agnes out of her brooding box once a day, Attila, the dominant hen, lines up to peck her. I actually have to guard Agnes and make swiping motions with my foot to keep Attila away. Broody chickens are weird…. sort of like women in labor I think. I take Agnes out of the box and put her in front of the water trough, but she’ll just sit there all spaced out unless I physically dunk her beak in the water. Then she drinks like she is dying of thirst. I have to dunk her beak several times to get her to drink up. Attila meanwhile, is waiting to show Agnes who is boss. That dang chicken even goosed Agnes at the water bucket while I was holding her! I felt badly about that one.
In short, my chickens are a big old pain in the butt right now. I am ready for them to knock it off and go back to being wonderful darlings. I guess first I need to cure them of bad habits.
Okay, and to address that, what is the deal with “internet information”? Some sites say that there is no way to cure egg eating, others say that chickens can be taught not to by shutting them in a dark box for a day, others say you can only cull the chickens, another that you put salt in the drinking water and they will get the minerals they need and stop, still others say it has nothing to do with nutrition and is just a behavioral thing. Where is the real info? Most frustratingly, most sites do a long list of the things to do to avoid egg-eating, unhelpfully mentioning that the best course of action is to avoid it ever starting. Well thanks for nothing! I know that and now it has started, so what do I do?
I’m going to be hopeful though and hope that it stops as soon as it started. But now I am worried about this weekend when I had intended to go out to visit my parents. It looks like I will just be leaving the problem to further develop as I won’t be here to collect eggs three times a day and my chickens will be penned up bored with lots of time on their hands to peck at eggs. Man! Frustrating!
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Oh, bummer! I was hoping it was only Agnes who’d become an egg-eater. I hope you can figure out how to make your chickens lovely again!!
June 9th, 2009
Reply to “I’m so Depressed”