cross your fingers for me

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karlooben

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guys can you cross your fingers for me and hope that the curtain trick in front of the nest boxes work i am now lucky if i get 1 egg a day out of about 8 layers and its driving me crazy beyond words that i have really thought about getting them all culled or at least the 2 main culprits but i dont want to do that , i have been searching on line and reading so many different things and tried different things even the english mustard etc trick { they still ate the mustard and seemed to like it } but none seem to be working although its very hot i have spent all morning walking around trrying to find things i can convert to roll away nest boxes but seeing that i cant get into the garage for a few weeks due to loads of decorating etc being done that idea will have to wait .
but i read that someone uses a curtain in front of the nest boxes with the thought of out of sight out of mind ummmm does that work and the only thing i had handy to use was garden membrane already cut to the size i needed so i have draped that in front of the boxes and sat in the run quietly waiting for 3 birds to lay and 2 came out right away and left the eggs alone so i grabbed them but now need to wait until mid afternoon to see if the others have laided and to see if any eggs have been eaten its going to be a long wait .
 
Your not the only one who says they like mustard Karlooben -I've never bothered trying it. All our nest boxes but one -17 of them- have a car mat slit and mounted at the entrance. The 'but one' is where we get problems. We removed the curtain for that because the cockerel panics if he can't see all his hens and sounds the alarm. He likes to stand guard outside the nest box so no more alarm calls but a broken egg will get eaten. Fortunately they haven't made the connection to an intact egg yet, so no egg eating. I thought they had started, so put a pot egg in there just to make sure, but they left it alone. One did try to incubate it! There is a picture of the car mats hanging in front of a 3 bay nest box in the thread 'Our Mobile Coops' in the General chickens section, third thread down, fifth picture on the first page.

Good luck.
 
i got home this afternoon to find 2 untouched eggs :D :D but i need to give this curtain thingy a go for at least a good few days especailly when i go back to work tomorrow as i dont get home tell around 4.30ish to collect eggs .
all banties and big girls can be mixed now but i will leave them seprated until each afternoon cant have all the bantie eggs going as well .
 
4 eggs broken 1 left untouched , i was so angry and when i spoke to another plot holder whos willing to help me build roll away nest boxes i kinda got a bit annoyed with him as he didnt really seem to understand why i was so upset i'm annoyed and upset as i am paying quite a bit for feed and getting nothing for it havent sold any eggs for nearly 3 weeks as i havent had any :( :( but i think i might just fork out for the roll away boxes from wells poultry i cant be waiting another few weeks for something to be built .
i called my horse feed supplier today whos old hand at keeping all birds done it for 50 yrs or more and each time shes had the probelm of egg eating she just fills an egg with mustard and curry powder and for her that works but at least she totally understood how i was feeling about it so late this afternoon i tried it filled 2 eggs left them in the laying compartment of the house and within minutes the birds were in there and attacked 1 egg but they must of hated it as they left 1 egg completely untouched so i am going to waste a few more eggs in the morning and do it again and see what happens its going to be a long wait as i wont get home tell 4,30ish
 
How far are you away from WR6 5AG. I have some ready made rollaways I shall be selling or some spare plastic inserts
 
quite a long way i am next to heathrow airport but i have ordered 2 roll away boxes now should be in tomorrow will just have to teach them to use them , only 1 egg saved today and that was from the bantams run and i did have one from the big girls at 10 am when i popped home to check but i dropped it :-)04 :-)04
 
Could have been even worse Karlooben. I've put several in my pocket and then bumped into something. The resulting mess takes hours to clean.

Hopefully the rollaways will solve your problem, so fingers crossed for you.
 
:lol :lol: : chris i have forgotten how many times i have done that and bent over omggggggggggggggg its the most gross thing ever and the smell :-)03 :-)03 even worse is when your car keys are in the pocket , yeh fingers crossed for the roll aways know what i will be doing tomorrow non stop putting an egg in it and showing them where to sit etc ohh great fun .
for now the big girls are sleeping back in one of those plastic garden shed thingys but over the weekend i am going to rebuild thier 4'4 shed on to the out side of the run so they get more space within the run and i enter the house from the back only to do everything but i am going to re paint it the whole lot and make it really really cosy for them with lots more vents as well was going to paint it duck blue on the inside :D its going to be so cosy that they are not going to want to eat any more eggs :lol: :-)17 yeh right dream on :lol:
 
Karlooben.
If you've got one of the large pot eggs (the white ones that you wince at the thought of laying), you might be able to balance it on the end with the hole in it, across the roll-away gap in the rollaway insert tray. I've done this to give the girls the idea, as I finished & fitted their new jumbo nestbox this weekend & wanted to make sure they knew what it was for! The pot egg got knocked over & rolled away when one of the girls hopped in to lay, but by then it'd done its job.

I too have fitted a "curtain" made from weed suppressing membrane, in the battle against egg-eating. I really want to get them out of the habit before I get my new hens later this month. Mind you, I fear that nature has possibly had a hand in solving the problem. I saw my lowest ranking hen chase off a tabby cat from my garden earlier, & was really proud of her. But when I went to shut the girls in their run at around 8.30pm, Energiser (chief egg muncher & head hen) was missing, & I found a pile of ginger feathers at the top of the garden :cry:
I can only hope that she legged it, & that she comes back, somewhat bald, in a few days. I know that she had a bad habit or two, but it's still sad to think that I might have lost her :cry:
 
i hope you get her back , i sat there for ages the other day rolling eggs up an down an they looked at me as if to say your stupid :lol: :lol:
 
Thanks Karlooben. No sign yet, & the others are a bit subdued & didn't lay today.
My husband's gutted too; he's always pretended not to like the hens but confessed this evening that Energiser was his favourite...
 
how lnog has it been now ? not sounding to good is it but then again at the end of the day they are animals and if they dont want to come back tell they are ready then so be it not sure i could handle the waiting though .
 
I sympathise Icemaiden, I think it's the not knowing that's so awful. At least by finding Henny's saddle I knew she wasn't coming back.
 
I'm trying to be pragmatic; Energiser disappeared on Sunday evening & since then I've only had two eggs, both soft shelled & broken, but not eaten. On the other hand though, when I open the back door, no-one clucks from the far end of the garden or comes running to me, partly because I don't dare to let the other three out of their run at the moment.
I saw the tabby again this evening; it had a couple of litres of cold water thrown over it. Hopefully it'll know where it's not welcome :evil:

Margaid- my heart went out to you when I read your story; I guess that finding Henny's saddle was cold comfort :-)06
How many birds did you lose? Will you have the heart to replace them?
 
Karlooben.
Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread.
How's the curtain working? Is it helping? Have the girls got the hang of the rollaway inserts yet, & have you had to make a frame to put them in to stop them from tipping when the girls perch on the edge of them? (Or are they just laying in the coop now, so that the eggs are more convenient to eat?)
 
lol i think we are used to threads being hi jacked :lol: :lol: dont worry about it .
umm well i managed to get 2 eggs from them yesterday but there wasnt any signs of broken ones so i dont know if the curtain is working or not or the golf balls have put them of i found 6 in the loft and put 3 in each corner where they lay as for the nest boxes they havent touched them but last night i covered the entrance to one of them and left it tucked away in a corner so in time they may use it only time wil tell .
 
3 busted eggs today :evil: and it might get worse as well , my hours are being changed very possibly { thanks ******** boss wont swear on here } from 7 am - 2,30 pm to 8 or 9 am start to after 4.pm or 4,30pm finish which means i wont get to do the girls or collect the eggs tell way after 6 pm mon - fri as i would have to do dogs first then horses then the birds by that time i wont have any eggs to collect , the winter is going to be impossible so the birds might have to go as i cant see me collecting up chicken poo andtrying to keep them clean in the dark as i wont leave them out in the poo all day ethier then theres walking the dogs in the dark on open common land so being out in the allotments in the dark is going to be jus as hard .
at mo everything is perfect and all animals are done in daylight etc been like this since i ever owned my own horse in 1994 now its all going to change but i dont know when in fact i am very very angry about all of it .
not only has this happened i mean works hours changing but when we got the telling of at work yesterday the boss used my dads death and my horses death agaisnt us and thats really put me and my mums back up big time.
so for now i dont really know what is going to happen to the birds i certianly wont want them all culled but i just cant see my self coping to well in winter .
 
You sound really down and upset, Karlooben, I'm so sorry. You certainly put in a lot of hours looking after all your animals. Try not to worry about what might happen in the winter, that's a long way away isn't it, and anything could change before then. Maybe you might be able to negotiate more flexible hours at last 2-3 days a week?
 
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