By Tom Read
Disappointing aftermath: a broody hen who eats eggs instead of hatching them into chicks. We carry on; the wayward hen will become chicken stew.
When we first contemplated keeping chickens here on Texada, we wanted to do it sustainably. The two most critical elements of sustainable chicken-raising, it seemed to us, were breeding and feeding. Thus, instead of buying chicks “through the mail” we would keep a rooster and hens (Dark Cornish), and breed replacements for our flock right here at home. Further, although we would start out by feeding store-bought grain mixes, we hoped eventually to develop a chicken feed of our own, based on easy-to-grow comfrey, plus seaweed gathered from nearby Raven Bay, plus maybe some home-grown grains.
Status so far: breeding is coming along well, albeit with a setback I’ll describe momentarily. Creating our own local chicken food is taking awhile longer. We hope to get it happening next year.
Meanwhile, with help from An, our mentor in all things chicken, we have successfully raised chickens using mother hens from her flock. With one exception, however, our own one-year-old hens failed to “go broody” this year. Very frustrating! So you can imagine the high expectations we placed on the lone hen who actually did start nest-sitting about a month ago. With this broody hen, at last we could complete the breeding cycle without external help, or so it seemed.
Alas, ‘twas not to be. Our broody hen started out well, with seven nicely-formed eggs under her in a comfortable, quiet and raccoon-proof nest box with ample food and water nearby. Then, about six days into her sitting, came the first warning that something wasn’t quite right: I found an egg lying outside the nest. It was still warm so I carefully put it back under her in hopes that it had merely fallen out when she rearranged her eggs. But the next day, and in days to follow, our would-be mother hen first expelled and then ate most of the eggs in that nest. Apparently, once they get a taste for raw egg, a chicken will continue to crack open and eat their own or other hens’ eggs.
Disappointing, but nothing goes to waste. Not too long from now she’ll make a nice chicken stew for us.
And I guess that’s why most people use electric incubators instead of natural mother hens for egg-hatching. Not us, however. Because we live off-grid, and rely chiefly on solar power in the summer, we don’t have the option of using an electric incubator. Thus, we are still quite determined to breed our own flock the old-fashioned way, grateful for yet another learning experience along the road to a sustainable way of life.
