Posted: Fri May 15, 2015 12:59 am Post subject: hen going it alone
Well my pair are sitting on their third clutch and I've been noticing for a while now that the cockpit bird has become quite aggressive. He has been chasing the hen around and not allowing her to sit on the eggs, so I have separated them. The last clutch they had was a disaster, she laid eight eggs and only one hatched, the others disappeared. Then I noticed the cockpit bird was feather plucking, so I took away the four week old featherless chicken and finished rearing it.
The first clutch they had went great. They had 5 healthy chick's, so it was disappointing to see his aggressive behaviour. My question is will the hen be ok on her own until the eggs hatch? Do I put him back in when they do hatch? I'm worried he will become more aggressive, and I'm also worried she won't be able to do it on her own.
what u describe in the 1st post is rare, with aviary breed......eliminating other stuff like number nesting boxes etc...
It sounds like u have a incompatibility issue that pops up every now and then... possibly because too closely related.
We had a couple similar instances of this in our early days when we would pair up selected pairs....
For other reasons we changed/ experimented with putting several selected un paired birds in a aviary that could be divided with removable partitions and nesting boxes in each potential flight area... once they paired off, partitions went in, each pair settled down
I dont recollect a single incidence of incompatibility.
It also made a huge improved difference in in quality of birds produced... and very noticeable, even thu many where closely related, they would pair off to not closely related or not related. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
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