Friday, February 10, 2012

Bump In The Road: Experiment Had Bad Results

A few days ago I was experimenting with a potential new nestling food recipe. I simply mixed equal parts or cooked quinoa with Higgin's Proteen dry nestling food. The test was to see if the birds liked it well enough that I could consider trying it with chicks.

Had I just tried it on the cocks, it would have been a total success but in my enthusiasm I mistakenly gave it to the hens too!


Oops, experiment over, two hens laid blue heat eggs!

So where did I go wrong? I have known for a long time to watch out for wheat products until the hens are in full breeding condition or you can over stimulate and cause meaningless eggs to be laid.

Oh no, Should have read the label on the Proteen product.



So what do I do now? Check the hens breeding condition. In this case, they are not ready, so I put the two hens in a lower level less light cage. And count my blessings that out of 75 plus, only two accidents!! All birds are back on cooked quinoa with broccoli.

Should I have had more problems from this bump in the road, I could have dropped there total breeding condition by putting them on KD powder in the water. This was not necessary and would really give my breeding a program a set-back.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Linda,
Thanks for a great article lets hope it turns a light on us breeders who use to much protien to bring our birds in condition.

Ed

Anonymous said...

Hi Linda,
Why do you think the KD powder would put your hens back?
Christel

Anonymous said...

75 hens....!!!!

75 hens....?????


75...........

Linda Hogan said...

Christel

Last Summer, I used KD powder to get hens to stop trying to nest late in the season. It was very effective in stopping breeding.