A few days ago I said that I thought that Marmite was going broody but I was mistaken. Marmite was just taking a very long time to lay her egg. However that same day Flame went broody and has been broody for four days now. Ebony has been broody for three and a half weeks which is ridiculous!
Speckles last laid six days ago and has gone back to drinking lots of water and doing sloppy poops. This was pretty much what I expected if this is a hormonal problem and I think she may take eight weeks off and then start laying again if she follows her previous pattern.
This means we have no bigger girls laying and our two best laying little girls are not laying since their broody break so egg production has dropped dramatically. We are getting one little egg a day at the moment.
Another thing that has changed is that Flame has stopped pecking me, hurrah! When she first went broody there were a few times when I knew that she was sitting on Marmite’s egg. I reached under her to remove the egg and was most surprised that she didn’t peck me.
The next thing I decided to try was to see if I could lift Flame from the nest box and again she didn’t peck me. I have been lifting Flame several times a day along with Ebony and she hasn’t pecked me.
I am amazed and extremely pleased by this change in Flame. It makes it so much easier to be able to handle her. I wonder what has brought about this change. None of the girls are pecking me now so maybe it has just taken this long for them to accept me handling them. I can’t say how much nicer it is to have no girls pecking me, especially Flame.
I lift Flame and Ebony out of the nest box several times a day
They are like a pair of bookends
They sit like this for a few minutes and then run off and scratch, preen or dust bath and then have food and water before returning to the nest box.
At bedtime I close the nest boxes but it makes no difference to these two girls as they just settle on top of the nest boxes.
Bedtime
I lift them to the perch once the pop hole has closed. I will be glad when these two girls have come out of this. I only hope that Flame isn’t going to stick at it as long as Ebony. I am wondering if Ebony is ever going to come out of this!
Click here to see the history of my flock.
Good that Flame has stopped pecking you.
It’s actually one of the things that I am most happy about. It’s not great when you can’t handle a pet and disappointing to think that they don’t want you to get close to them. Chickens naturally don’t like being handled because they are prey animals but it is good to know that they trust me enough to allow it.
You are having a broody time of it at the moment!! Such cute pics of little Cinnamon in the background! 🙂 xx
Never have we had this much broodiness! I always take more photos than I need then just use a few and somehow Cinnamon was in the background of all of them. She looks as if she is wondering what on earth these two girls are up to as am I. xx