
What does a hen do with her unfertilized eggs? - mac01021
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/what-does-a-hen-do-with-her-unfertilised-eggs-10100975.html
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iamthepieman
We currently have 26 five day old chicks in a cardboard box in our mud room.
We are raising them to lay and, eventually, brood so hopefully I'll be able to
answer this question in about 9-12 months or so.

This is the first time I've ever raised layers though 20 years ago as a
teenager, my brother and I raised 100 birds every spring for the family
freezer.

An interesting thing about the young chicks, even at 3 days old they were
acting exactly like adult birds- making dust baths, establishing a pecking
order and even attempting to roost though the only thing elevated in their box
is their feeder.

~~~
kbutler
We've done this a few times - both incubating from eggs and receiving chicks
mail order. Incubating and seeing the eggs hatch is awesome, but it's also
pretty fun to pick up a cheeping box at the post office!

However, it won't be very long until you want them OUT of the mudroom ASAP.
The dust and smell from poo and feathers and whatever else gets bad quickly.
Not a nice addition to breakfast.

Note that I do seem to be more irritated by it than other family members who
like pets more.

~~~
Diederich
> ... but it's also pretty fun to pick up a cheeping box at the post office!

One of the highlights of the years we lived in an extremely rural county in
the midwest was the yearly call from our rural post office. This is exactly
what was said when we picked up the phone:

"Diederich? Postmaster here. Your birds are at the post office. Thanks, bye."

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have_faith
>This is an edited answer from What does a hen do with her unfertilised eggs?
which originally appeared on Quora

Is the Independent sourcing editorial from Quora now? I assume when you answer
a question on Quora you give up all rights to the content. I wonder what sort
of arrangement they have.

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mason240
The Independent had an ownership change recently and dramatically shifted from
journalism to click bait.

~~~
gadders
There also isn't a print version of the Independent any more, just the tabloid
"I" newspaper.

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wycx
They get off them and then a crow swoops in and steals them. It was never a
sure thing as to whether we would get our backyard chickens daily eggs or if
the crow would.

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dec0dedab0de
looks like the story stopped just before answering the question in the title

~~~
msisk6
Actually they have it right at the beginning. Hens don't know if an egg is
fertilized or not. Most will just lay and leave. Some go broody and will sit
on the eggs until they hatch. Some hens will sit on the eggs (and collect any
nearby eggs and sit on a pile of them) until they die if they don't hatch.

We have about 100 birds and at any given time two or three will be broody. We
collect the eggs everyday so sometimes the broody hen will just sit there on
nothing or on one of our "fake" eggs (we put fake eggs in the places we want
the hens to lay their eggs). We'll remove the broody hens from the coop
several times a day until we break them of the habit. That usually works.

Occasionally we'll have snakes get into the coop and eat eggs. If the snake
gets a porcelain fake egg that pretty much the end of that snake eventually.
Rattlesnakes are more difficult, but we've gotten pretty good had removing
those, too.

Our big problem this year is hawks (our chickens free range). We've lost about
20 birds this year just to hawks. Just this last weekend hawks killed three
(flew away with two and mostly maimed a third I had to cull) and one hen got
away missing her tail feathers and received some deep cuts our vet stitched
up. She got away because our dominate rooster attacked and killed the hawk
after her.

~~~
gadders
In the UK, the big problem is foxes. We have an electric fence and automated
coop door closer now. We also have a guy that enjoys shooting and roams the
fields round our house shooting them.

~~~
frankus
I've been thinking of building an automated coop door closer. Can you link me
to some more info on yours?

~~~
msisk6
We're been using this one the past few years:

[https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Chicken-Coop-Door-
Standard/...](https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Chicken-Coop-Door-
Standard/dp/B01EN3O4MY)

It has a solar panel and rechargeable battery and you program in your lat/long
and optional + or - times for the door to remain open or close around sunrise
and sunset.

It works well. Of course, you could hack something up with a micro-controller
to do the same thing rather easily.

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gadders
Looking at our 20 hens, they typically ignore them once they have been laid.

The only exception to this is if the hen has become broody, then they will sit
on them virtually 24 hours a day trying to hatch them. The chickens become
very docile when they're broody.

~~~
rotexo
that's interesting, I always got the feeling that hens were more aggressive
when broody. When one of my family's chickens was broody, I made chirping
noises after forcing her out of her nesting box, and she made a loud clucking
noise and charged at me (I assume because she thought I had her chicks)

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camtarn
And for a bit more detail on what actually happens inside a chicken while it's
forming the egg:

[https://vimeo.com/86122048](https://vimeo.com/86122048)

Birds are surprisingly complex biological factories - especially the bits of
their internal 'production line' which rotate the egg-to-be to twist membranes
into shock-absorber-like suspension structures for the yolk.

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stuartaxelowen
They eat them.

~~~
msisk6
Yeah, you don't want that. We cull the hens that start to eat eggs.

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gadders
//Offtopic - we've just started to raise 8 goslings, and they are completely
different temperament to geese. Much friendlier and less flighty.

~~~
gadders
I meant different to chickens, of course. Bloody work interrupting my posting.

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scandox
I would cross the street not to have to say 'a hen' or 'an hen'. Both make my
tongue trip.

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/629/when-
should-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/629/when-should-i-use-
a-versus-an-in-front-of-a-word-beginning-with-the-letter-h)

