Moon over Martinborough

Ethel broody on the chook house floor

Read Part 1 first.

“There are two main ways to get a hen off the cluck,” Aussie Bronwyn said over the phone. “For the first way, you need a bucket, and for the second way you need a trap…”

Get a large bucket. Fill it with cold water (but not too cold). Pick up the offending chicken – holding her tight and making sure her wings are pinned. Now, very quickly, stick her backside in the bucket.

“Once her backside’s wet,” Aussie Bronwyn said, “she won’t want to sit down on any eggs, and she’ll forget the whole thing.”

“If she’s still broody after that, you can use the trap. But I think it’s even more cruel than the first.”

The trap

Get a trap. Something like a cat trap will do, but you can use any old cage. Put the chicken inside. Then hang the trap from a tree. Leave it there overnight. Make sure there is air all around the chicken on all sides. Top, bottom, front and back.

“After a night in the air like that,” she said, “even the most determined hen will go off the cluck.”

I paused, holding the phone in my hand. I didn’t know how to respond. Poor Ethel just wanted to have some babies. The thought of doing either of these things to her broke my heart.

I admit it. I’m a complete and total chicken-loving wimp.

Aussie Bronwyn could tell I was reluctant. Out of nowhere, she added a sentence that changed everything.

“As for me, I just hate to let a broody hen go to waste.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You could give her some fertile eggs, so she could hatch them.”

The friendly chickens

In a recent issue of New Zealand Lifestyle Block magazine, I read an article about Barnevelders, a breed the magazine called ‘the friendly chicken.’ I wanted some.

Barnevelder hens - image from Wikipedia

(I won’t dwell on the fact that I used to read Men’s Health and GQ. Now, since moving to Martinborough, I won’t even touch a magazine unless there’s a picture of a chicken or an olive on the cover. What can I say?)

Barnevelders have been bred as layers so ‘broodiness’ has been bred out of them. Imagine, no broody hens! Also, and perhaps most importantly for me, people say Barvevelders are more apt to come rushing up to you, and they don’t mind being picked up.

“Well,” I said to Aussie Bronwyn, “How do you get fertile eggs?”

“Through the mail, of course.”

Of course. Everybody knows you order fertile eggs through the mail.

“I use Precious Poultry,” she added.

I hung up the phone and contacted them immediately.

Package in the mail

Three days later a box of six fertile Barnevelder eggs arrived on our doorstep. I’d explained to Fiona at Precious Poultry that I wanted to get one or two Barnevelder hens out of all this, and she’d said I should order six eggs just to make sure.

Box of fertile eggs

“Since it’s your hen’s first time hatching, she won’t have such a high success rate. They sometimes make mistakes and step on the eggs. They get better at hatching with experience.”

Who knew?

Fiona also said I had to “let the yolks settle” for 24 hours before I put them under Ethel.

I don’t understand how fertile eggs can survive being delivered in the mail, or how an “unsettled” yolk can settle and still manage to produce a baby chick, but there you have it.

Eggs under Ethel

The next day, Rick and I headed out to the chook house with our precious Barnevelder eggs.

Inside the cardboard box, each egg was wrapped in tissue. We unwrapped them all very carefully. They were a beautiful dark brown.

Rick picked up Ethel, who growled and fought the way she always does. I stole her warm, unfertile eggs, and gave her the fertile ones. They were room temperature but still very cool compared to the old ones. How could they possibly survive?

When Rick set Ethel down, she didn’t seem to care that we’d changed the eggs at all. She went right on sitting.

We looked on proudly. “I hope they hatch,” I said. “But I don’t know what we’ll do if they turn out to be boys.”

The Chicken Palace

“Don’t worry about that,” Rick answered. “I know what to do with them if they’re boys.”

I realized Rick was thinking about our chicken killing lesson at Aussie Bronwyn’s a couple months ago, and I shuddered.

“I hope we don’t get any boys,” I said.

Back in the house I counted the days out on the calendar. It takes 21 days to hatch a chick.

I realized then that the eggs were due to hatch on the day of our big Thanksgiving party. I imagined guests running out to the chook house to see the newborn chicks. I felt like a kid at Christmas, and I couldn’t wait.

____________________

Related posts

Read the thrilling conclusion: ‘Ballad of the Broody Hen – Part 3’.

Go back and read Broody – Part 1.

Or read other posts about chickens.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 10:48 am and is filed under Chickens, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.