Poor old Barbara clearly wants to be a mum. She’s not coming down from the nest in the morning, and after three hours (or more) of sitting on not only her eggs, but also Gerry and Margot’s efforts I’m having to physically lift her out of the Eglu and down into the run.
She doesn’t like it. She makes funny little noises as you open up the side of the Eglu to pick her out, and then makes herself as wide and flat as she can over the eggs, which makes her quite difficult to pick up.
Then, when you put her down, she plumps up all of her feathers and sits there on the floor, among the chippings, shaking a little. I’m not sure whether she’s shocked or furious.
Fortunately she’s not getting too cross about it. She’s not pecked me, which I thought she might, although I’m wearing gardening gloves just in case she gets too protective.
Unfortunately, though, looking at the various chickeny books we have, this could easily go on for three weeks.
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Dear Blagger supporter of Barbara chooken: I gather that you are assuming / hoping that after 3 weeks, Barbara ( what a good looking dame !) will lose her urge to sit & return to being a normal (for us humans) healthy egg-laying entity.
I have not had such an experience myself with my rooster, Osama bin Layin’s special little friend Laila, a dark grey Pekin who is unlikely to ever become a Rhodes scholar.She will sit & sit & sit until she weighs as much as a matchbox.
To save us all the agony, I pop here into my special ‘de-broodifier’ for 2 days & 2 nights. The de- broodifier is an old bird cage with a WIRE MESH floor, suspended off the ground, in the chook yard. The NON SOLID floor I’m told is an essential part of the excercise. ‘Chook psychologists’ report that the feeling of insecurity engendered by an absence of SOLID SUPPORT replaces the urge to reproduce. Whatever. It works.
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