Recent content by Sunny Side Up

My poor little cockatiel, Gimel, has a big lump just behind his left leg, about the size of a grape. The vet says it's a lipoma, a fatty tumor, caused by poor diet (too much seed, not enough pellets). She advised changing his diet and dabbing it with DMSO. The DMSO did nothing to affect the...

Today I was given a peachick that someone found. It's acting lively but it feels light to me. It came with game bird starter but the chick didn't seem very interested in eating it. I've added a splash of ACV in the water and scrambled an egg for the chick to eat. It was most interested in eating...

Graciesing2us you'd need to put those eggs under a hen who was "broody", who was in the mood to set on a nest all day & night for weeks and incubate eggs. It's difficult to make a hen go broody if she doesn't want to, if she isn't getting the signals from her body to do it. Some folks say that...

So this morning I noticed a big "broody poop" in the yard and asked my boys, who were doing the chicken chores, "who did this?" and they said "Wilson!" They said that he's still been setting in the corner of his house, even though we had removed the eggs from there. There was a plastic tumbler...

While I know there are species of birds whose males set eggs and tend chicks, I don't know if this is normal for domestic turkeys. Wilson has never done this before, neither did the other tom I had. Wilson has fathered poults already, but I usually keep the hen and poults in a separate pen...

Here's Wilson setting in the corner of his house, and below puffing up his feathers while hissing "Go away!" We put an end to his project this morning and he's been strutting around the yard as usual, seemingly unaffected by our interference. (We ate the eggs for breakfast!) I didn't want to...

There's always something new to discover when you keep poultry...today my tom turkey, Wilson, has gone broody! Yeah, that was my reaction too when my boys came in from doing the chicken chores chuckling and shaking their heads. Some chicken hens have been laying eggs in the big wooden dog...

Oh DEFINITELY put her in a Broody Buster cage ASAP! Four months is a long, long time for a hen to be setting! Leghorns aren't bred to be broody so something is a little haywire in this hen's head. Try putting the cage out in the sun during the daytime (with cover for shade of course) the...

You *should* be able to put 2 broodies in the same buster, as long as they're getting along nicely.

Just begin at the beginning. The original post has a lot of good basic information.

Aww, don't feel guilty! Better she spend a few days in the Broody Buster than several weeks or more of futile brooding. Though if you find this hen is frequently going broody every 3-6 months you may want to allow her to set a few eggs once in a while. Buff Orps tend to be a broody breed...

Because each hen is different, with her own component of broody instincts & skills, there are a variety of ways to break one's broody mood. Some hens are so lightly committed their broodiness can be broken by simply taking her off the nest and putting her out in the sunny yard with the rest of...