Gardenfest and Broody Hen

Yesterday was Gardenfest. Hilda and I rushed through the chicken chores to get on the road at 7:15. We got caught on our way in not only behind a hay truck but also following a very slow moving construction truck. Fortunately, the keynote speaker began at 8:15, not 8:00 as we had thought. We had 10 minutes to spare.

The keynote speaker was Roy Diblik of Northwind Perennial Farm. Loyal readers may remember that we visited this nursery following my birthday boat tour of Lake Geneva last June. I enjoyed the talk. Hilda, not so much. She had trouble hearing him, for one thing, and found him to be negative.  I could see her point, as he was adamantly opposed to traditional gardening methods that separated plants and surrounded them with wood chips. His point, with which I completely agreed, was that plants don’t normally grow in wood chips. Plants are social organisms, he said over and over. They need to touch each other, just as we do. He gave a brief summary of the recent shift in agricultural practices. In the 1930’s, magazines talked about gardening as an enjoyable passtime. After World War II, when the munitions industry switched over to making chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, gardening became yard work, “work” being the operative word.  We have spent too long trying to make plants do what we want them to do, completely ignoring what the plant wants to be. We are not the Land of the Free, he said, “We are the Land of the Neat and Tidy.” Get to know the plants. Plant them the way they want to grow. I could listen all day to someone who talks about plants like they are dear friends. My kind of guy.

We spent the morning learning more about identifying plants in winter, which is much harder than doing it when they have leaves. In the second session, we heard a talk on hydroponics and aquaponics. I expect you know that hydroponics is growing plants without soil using nutrient-laden, aerated water. 

Hydroponically-grown lettuce at various stages of growht

The instructor in front of hydroponic tomatoes and cucumbers being trained to vine onto strings from the ceiling

Aquaponics adds fish into the system. In theory, it makes a more sustainable system. Fish put nigrogen into the water in their waste, and the plants take it out. Nile Tilapia is the fish of choice for aquaponics because they grow to market weight (2 to 2.5 lbs) in six months. An aquaponics producer, in theory, should have two sources of income: the vegetables and the fish. Unfortunately, China has so flooded the market with farm-raised tilapia that most people running aquaponics operations are only able to profit from the vegetables. [I just finished reading Cheap: the high cost of discount culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell, which has a chapter on food that has made me unwilling to knowingly eat anything produced in China. Ever. The trouble is in the “knowingly” part.]

 The instructor explained that the water in the fish tank was naturally and normally murky. He wasn’t kidding. He said there were 16 fish in the tank, which was far below its capacity. I forget what he said capacity was, but it astounded me. It is an intensive system. I looked into the tank from the top and could not see a single fish, and it wasn’t a large tank. I have often heard Terry say that a fish will taste like the water it has been. Seeing this tank did not make me eager to try aquaponic tilapia. I am a reluctant fish-eater under the best of circumstances.

Aquaponics: the tank with the window (right) is for the fish; the two tanks to the left are filters, and the beds with the plants get the water from the filter tanks. The water is then pumped back to the fish tank.

The lunch break was an hour and 15 minutes. It took us about 20 minutes to eat. As we were finishing, three Master Gardeners joined us at our table. One of them was bent about the keynote speaker, saying that a lot of what he said was simply not accurate. Oh well. She likes neat and tidy gardens, I bet.

We dropped our tickets off for the drawings and looked through the vender stalls, which took another 10 minutes.  One of the vendors had shovels with pictures cut into them. "I think those would be hard to use," I whispered to Hilda, who giggled.

Vendor stalls

Not very useful shovels

“Now what?” Hilda asked.

“We could go to my office and check our email,” I suggested. We went upstairs. The email didn’t take long. I made us cups of tea and got out my Pocket Farkel. We made it through a game and a half before it was time for the afternoon sessions.

In the afternoon we learned about native pollinators and starting plants from seed. There was new information for both of us. It was a nice day.

Today, I set about the task of trying to break Nelly Elly of her broodiness. Hilda noticed that she rarely left the nest box maybe two weeks ago. With one thing and another, we haven’t had time to deal with it. What, you may ask, is a broody hen? The primordial chicken, of course, laid eggs to reproduce. As part of that cycle, the hen incubated, or brooded, the eggs. When the eggs hatched, she returned to normal. Through domestication, much of the broodiness has been bred out of the chickens. Some breeds are more prone to it than others. Buff Orpingtons, it would appear, still get broody. The difficulty is that the eggs are never going to hatch. Indeed, the eggs are not even under the chicken since Terry installed the roll-away ramp.

Nelly Elly brooding

I’m not exactly sure why broodiness is a bad thing. The hen stops laying, which decreases production. I think the larger problem is that she doesn’t eat much, and without the cue to stop brooding when the eggs hatch, I suppose she could starve. It does seem like when one has a broody hen, one must Do Something.

I did a search on backyardchickens.com. Most of the people in the first forum I read solved the problem by getting the afflicted hen some fertilized eggs. We are so not going there. I read another post about putting four ice cubes under the hen, one each on front, back, left, and right. The other suggestion was to put the hen in a cage with a wire bottom and a fan blowing on her underside. Apparently, when the hen goes broody, a brain hormone causes her belly to get warmer to properly incubate the eggs. Cooling the belly feeds back to the brain and stops the release of hormone.

I didn’t have time to get a cage set up during the week. We didn’t want to get the nest boxes all wet with ice cubes. We tried an ice pack wrapped in a towel. No success. This morning, I dragged the cat’s kennel into the chicken run and set it up on cement blocks so the wind could take the place of a fan. I had to put the cage sideways because the wires at the bottom were too far apart for Nelly Elly’s feet. Also, the solid metal bottom could act as a shade for the afternoon sun. I put Della’s food and water bowls in there because they attach to the cage, and Nelly Elly would not be able to tip them over. Della said she didn't mind.

Nelly Elly was NOT excited to be removed from her nest box. The video shows her when I first installed her. Another thing that broody chickens do is puff themselves up, which can be observed in this clip. The other girls were either concerned or curious. As soon as I left the run, they crowded around the cage for moral support or because they wanted some of the food. Lizette (the white one) seemed particularly eager for a snack, but had trouble figuring out how to get her head through the bars. Nelly Elly settled down some and pecked at the food. I took these three video clips in a 5-minute span of time.

Nelly Elly has not yet tried to sit down. I will likely take pity on her soon and put in a 2 x 4 so she can rest her feet. I hope one day in the cage will do it. We’ll have to put her in the coop for the night for safety and warmth. Chickens. It’s always something….