Eggs-pert Audience Participation Fifth Round!

Two Different Egg Problems:


The top photo is of an usually small egg. The very small egg is less than half the size of the plastic egg below it.

Question 1: How do you explain this small egg when the rest of this hens eggs were normal sized?


The bottom photo is of a egg broken when another hen flung it out of the nest and it just happened to land in her dish of hemp seed..

Question 2: What is the usual reason that hens throw eggs out of the nest during incubation?

Please send your answers before 10:00 am Saturday as a comment to this post. Come on Guys and Gals, please participate!! No right answers were received before the Saturday deadline so the deadline is extended till I get a right answer!! It's now noon on Sunday and still no answer. Please jump in and win this one!!

After three days, I still do not have a winner so I will answer and declare myself the winner or the loser as it is a real discouraging loss to me when I do not hear from you!

Answer to Question 1: The process of egg formation is under hormonal control. The hen that laid the small egg had laid three normal sized eggs prior to the small one. This egg did not have any yolk! It is not a very common occurrence and hens that lay a yolk less egg stop laying. She is currently sitting on two eggs having pushed one out of the nest. I am considering stopping her from sitting as I noticed that yesterday she was sleeping excessively on the nest and likely will not eat enough to keep from loosing too much weight. On occasion a hen will lay all smaller sized eggs but they have a yolk and develop and hatch normally. A few years ago, one of my bronze hens each year laid normal small complete eggs. Her normal clutch was eight small eggs and all hatched but only because I fostered some to other hens! I have a couple of roller hens that have laid seven eggs each. That is too many to cover and turn well.

Answer to Question 2: The usual reason that a hen throws an egg out of the nest during incubation is it is infertile and she realizes that sitting on it is futile! Infertile eggs can be a problem if the nest is too full but that seems to have nothing to do with her pitching an infertile egg out of the nest. Most of the time, infertile eggs are helpful as they provide the chick with some protection in the before banding phase. If there are not infertile eggs in the nest, when the chicks hatch, I place a couple of plastic eggs in the nest till banding.


Second Notice, Don't forget to send me your entry for the Canary Blog Easter Parade, In Your Easter Bonnet. Details are in the March 22 posting. So far, I have only received a couple of entries so please respond promptly! I look forward to hearing more from you!!

Diet Changes for Banded Chicks

Food to Grow On

The nest of chicks shown is the middle nest shown on March 26th where the clear chick was in trouble and needed a couple of feedings a day for two days. Look how good they all look now! All banded on time, usually the fifth day.

Now that they are banded, I discontinue the quarter hard boiled egg once a day and continue giving egg food. In addition, I add greens such as sprouting seed, romaine lettuce, broccoli, chickweed, spinach, or peas. The sprouting seeds shown are Canadian grown Canola rape seed. The sprouter has three middle rings for seed. Water is added to the top white tray once a day and dumped from the bottom white tray. I brought this one back from the German DKB show but I have seen similar ones at health food stores.

I also like to offer a dish of dry plain ABBA Green 92 to all of the yellow ground birds. Red ground birds get a dish of dry Quiko red or similar product.

Dud Fools Big Bird!!

Dud Wants to Thank All of You Who Pleaded in Her Behalf!

Yes, thanks to you who wrote in defense of Dud, I decided to give her my best shot and see if she could lay good eggs. I gave her unlimited re-cycled egg shell and look at her five fine eggs from her second clutch, which I set under her today! She really fooled me! She really knows how to put egg on my face!

The top two photos are of her mate, who was loving and supporting during this ordeal! For all their trouble, I will leave him in to help her raise their chicks!

The top egg photo is two of the four fertile eggs she laid in her first clutch. They all looked the same, poor shell quality and that lighter colored ring. Two of the eggs I broke to determine if they were fertile and two I incubated to see if they could hatch. The shell was so poor that the embryos just dried out.

Today's Thought: If the first clutch does not work out, try again!

Tuesday's Tipster - Margaret Perry Fletcher

Congratulations Margaret on being selected as this weeks Tuesday's Tipster!

Don't Act Like a Predator. Allow Your Birds Privacy.

At this time of the year, canaries are especially protective of their youngsters and may suspend feeding their babies during your stay in the bird room. Don't act like a stalking predator, intently watching and staring at them but rather I like to establish a non threatening presence by humming or singing or talking to the birds as I go about my chores in the bird room.

Usually I make inspections of a hen's nest when I clean her cage or put out fresh egg food or sprouted seed. By doing this as part of my normal daily routine I find that most hens will readily return to their nest or rush over, get a bite of food after I've looked at their eggs or babies , and then quickly return to the nest without further disruption. For best breeding success, I recommend that you minimize your time in the bird room to allow shy parents plenty of time to care for their families.

Thank You Margaret for this timely tip! The best thing we can do for our birds is to take care of them and then get out of the aviary. Growing up with a mother who raised 100 canaries a year, I believe that giving birds privacy was the very first aviary lesson my mother taught me. We would go to the aviary about three times a day but not to linger or stare but rather to feed the birds as quickly as possible and leave the aviary promptly! It is so tempting to hang out in the aviary but your birds will take care of business, if you do not threaten them and just let them do it.

Tuesday's Tipster is a regular feature of this blog. Please contribute your valuable experience by sending in your tips. Identify your e-mail by using Tuesday's Tipster as the subject, and send to canarytales@juno.com.

Bird Brain Teaser

What is Canary Winking and what does it mean?

The first correct answer will be posted, so please jump in if you think you know the answer!!

Congratulation Shawn Bartlett of South Africa, You are the winner of this Bird Brain Teaser!!

See the answer by clicking on comments!

Bachelorette, Chicks, and Gator Heat Update

Sunshine Covers Wichita and the Hogan Aviary!

Outside of the ice and seven inches of snow, we escaped the major blizzard and today is gorgeous with highs today 52 and later in the week to reach 70! Normal high for now is 62. That's Kansas Weather for you!

When I came back from the NCBS board meeting in Tulsa, I found Bachelorette had laid three eggs directly on the corn cob floor. She was not even covering them with nesting material or feathers... So I foster those three eggs and the fourth she laid the next day on the floor. The chick photo is the two chicks from Bachelorette and Shocker and are doing well! One chick is variegated like Shocker and the other is clear and favors Bachelorette.

Bachelorette has recycled and built a regular nest and laid again. I was so anger with her for laying on the floor, that I promptly started her back on the weekly vitamin E in the water treatment. Hind site tells me I should have waited a week as she did recycle appropriately but it was too quick so she had the last word and only laid two eggs. From two cycles she has only laid a total of six eggs. I will slow her down a bit by letting her raise a couple of chicks and letting her and Shocker go one more time. Third time should be charm for her!!

The nest mates of yesterdays crop impacted chick are doing fine. No diarrhea, or wrinkled abdomen and I see a hint of fat being deposited under the skin on the rump and the droppings are completely normal in form and correctly encased in the normal fecal sac.

Likewise the chick that was not fluffy like his marginally fluffed nest mates on Thursday, is doing fine. I hand fed them twice a day for two days only with a thin mixture of ABBA Green 92 and tap water. Tip for hand feeding: when a chick is full, it will expel the fecal sac, do not over feed, you want the crop to empty correctly and not impact. The nest mates are now fully fluffy and the previously naked chick has some fluff especially on his rump. It will be fine without any further hand feeding.

The chick that was found on the cage floor looks exactly like his three nest mates. So everything is going well!

Gator heat has two hens, one with five chicks and the other four. Today, he is helping feed both nests! What a good papa he is!!! The top photo is Gator Heat and his hens and chicks. He has finished feeding the nest of five in the foreground and has moved to the nest of four to finish the job!

Troubles at the Hogan House

Oh no! Just how bad can it get?

Last night my beloved Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Team, led 37 of 40 minutes only to lose to the Michigan Team in the sweet sixteen! What I can savage is a hope that now with the loss, Collins and Aldrich will not jump ship to the NBA like last years national championship team! Oh well, I can't wait to see next years team!

Then another blizzard has hit. The nearest town West of Wichita, Hutchinson, has 18 inches of snow but the next town West Pratt, has 28 inches !! We have layers of sleet and then thinner layers of snow and it just keeps coming down! I work tonight at the hospital, hope I do not get snowed in.. I did once and had to work four straight 8 hour shifts before help could get in and then those who rescued us, were snowed in for three more 8 hour shifts.. Gone are my daffodils and tulips, gone are my beautiful seeding chickweed!!.. Oh well...

Yesterday evening, I noticed a chick with an unbelievable amount of egg food in its crop. On closer examination, I noticed it felt cold and clammy, the skin in the lower abdomen wrinkled and totally liquid droppings were all around the edge of the nest. There was no expected fat layer visible under the skin on the rump. The chick was literally gagging and I could see the food coming partially up into its mouth...When I palpated the crop, it was hard. I tried to empty the crop and warm the chick up but alas it was too late and the chick was dead this morning. I took all hard boiled egg away from this hen except what is in the egg food, provided a clean nest, and offered a dish of pure ABBA green 92. I had offer some romaine lettuce yesterday so I am not sure about whether it might have set this off... so no more...One more of the chicks has the wrinkled lower abdomen like dehydration but I think maybe I can save three of the four.. Just like my Jayhawks, I lost this one. Oh well....Usually, I stop the plain hard boiled egg when the chicks are banded but this hen was not feeding the egg food as well as I liked so I made a bad decision to keep her getting hard boiled egg..I will introduce pure hard boiled egg again when the first chicks leaves the nest as it is an easy way to wean the chicks...

Now this morning I found a chick on the floor. After taking a quick photo, I warmed it up in my hands and placed it back in the nest and readjusted the nest to make sure it is perfectly level and provided a perch slightly higher than the nest so the hen will fly up and any chicks will more likely fall into the nest when she takes off. This chick will likely be fine! I always warm them up before declaring them dead as when they are cold they can look dead but they are not.