During a recent trip to Europe, I had a chance to meet up with our German friends and travel with them through Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Austria. They had visited us last summer and left inspired to get chickens. So, last October, Burkhart went to work building his chicken coop and eventually got his first chickens in May of this year. He had a lot of adventures as he began his journey to become Chicken Daddy, including outsmarting a clever chicken who learned how to escape the coop, dealing with broody hens and setting up the coop so the hens would lay eggs in the coop and not in random places on their property. During our recent travels, I shared some of the things I’ve learned in an effort to reduce his steep learning curve. After all the help I received from my chicken coach and the chicken whisperer, it felt good to help another aspiring chicken dad on his egg-laying journey.

The fact is there are always people who want to help others be successful in their endeavors, whether it be around raising chickens, traveling through Europe or running a business.

Have you heard the phrase, “Well, you’re no spring chicken?” As you can imagine, the subtext is that chickens are typically born in spring. For me, that means at least one of my chickens is going to be broody. In case you are a chicken novice, a “broody” hen wants to gather a clutch of eggs, incubate them and ultimately hatch them. The first step in this “broodiness” is gathering eggs to sit on until she has an appropriate number in her clutch.

In my experience, that “appropriate” number in a clutch can exceed 12 eggs. So we intervene. Considering the size of my coop and the number of potential broody hens, we have settled on six eggs being an ideal clutch size. Once a hen goes broody, we mark the designated eggs and then, on a daily basis, lift the broody hen up and remove all unmarked eggs from her clutch. Depending on the hen, her acceptance of this daily handling can vary from a quiet “growl” to all-out pecking at the handler. Other than occasionally leaving the coop to eat and poop, she will sit on her eggs for three weeks.

For some reason, when I introduce pullets into the greater flock, my older chickens seem to regress. They start chasing the pullets away from the food, squawking at each other, and in general not being very nice to the newcomers. I get they need to re-establish their pecking order, but do they really need re-learn how to be a kind chicken? My biggest frustration is that this means the new chickens are forced to sleep in the nesting boxes. When the younger hens try to jump onto the roosting bar, the older hens start pecking at them. Last summer, we ended up with four hens roosting on the bars and the remaining nine pullets crammed into the nesting boxes. While dogs don’t like to sleep in their pee or poop, apparently chickens don’t care. So we end up with messy nesting boxes, and “poopy” eggs.

Sally, our lone survivor of the Great Chicken Massacre of May 2021, is a feisty hen. While Sven is at the top of my flock’s pecking order, I’d bet money that Sally is the top hen. I’ve seen her peck at the younger hens when they wanted to roost next to her at night or chase them away if they have a little morsel of treat that she wants for herself. Last year, she went broody in early spring, but we weren’t ready to add peeps to our flock. When I kicked her off her eggs every day to collect them, she would aggressively peck at me. This occurred every day for over 3 weeks until she finally gave up. She went broody two more times during the spring and summer before we finally agreed to let her hatch those eggs.

Since my chickens are somewhat famous, I frequently get asked, “Julie, what’s going on with your chickens?” Typically, I smile and say they are doing great.

However, last fall, when my chickens weren’t laying, I was frustrated. I was doing all the hard work and not getting the rewards for my effort. During this egg-laying drought, when people would ask me, “how are your chickens?” I’d respond with a sigh and say, “They are fine.”

I am always energized by the winter solstice. Yes, it marks the time that our daylight starts to increase. But even more exciting for me is that it is around the time when my pullets start laying eggs. Since hens need about 15 hours of daylight in order to lay eggs, egg production will drop off in the fall/winter. However, once pullets (hens less than 1 year of age) reach about 20 weeks of age, they will lay through the winter.

Once early December arrives, I live in anticipation of finding an egg in the nesting box. Every morning I go up and eagerly peek into the box hoping to find an egg. And this year, I have been disappointed every day past winter solstice and Christmas. My hens looked healthy, they were eating and drinking, walking around the chicken run. But they were not laying eggs.