Today on the Urban Chicken Podcast, I answer more chicken questions posed by listeners in Session #4 of Listeners’ Q & A series.  The chicken issues being discussed and considered in this session are: 1) understanding “sex-link” chickens; 2) dealing with a bad broody hen; and 3) learning which common yard and house plants are toxic to feed to your flock.

WHAT IS A “SEX-LINK” CHICKEN?

Sex-linked chickens (often just referred to as “sex-links”) are a very common type of egg-layer chicken that is available.  This hybrid chicken is not a specific breed and the practice of breeding sex-links is well worth understanding.  Here is a recent message that I received from one Urban Chicken Podcast Listener in Oregon who wrote to learn more about sex-links.  Here is what Erin emailed me:

Hi Jen!
I still faithfully listen to your podcast each week and enjoy all the great topics.  I have a question for you about 2 of my girls. I have a black sex-link and a golden sex-link chicken and I am curious what the sex-link actually means.  What is their actual breed?  I have noticed that these two girls are my most dependable egg layers.  For the past year, I am quite sure they have each produced an egg every day.  They also have friendly, docile personalities.

Thanks for your great podcast!

Erin
Eugene OR

This is a terrific question!  I suspect that many hobbyist chicken keepers who own sex-links are unfamiliar with the origins of this hybrid chicken.

First it is important to understand that a “Sex-Link” is not a breed of chicken (and likely never will be.)  Rather, “sex-link” is a name used to describe a practice of cross-breeding various genders and breeds of certain chickens to produce particularly colored, hybrid offspring.  More specifically, this cross-breeding practice bears sex-linked progeny whose color and markings upon hatching reveal the chick’s sex. Sex-linked male chicks will have very distinct and different coloring patterns than sex-linked female chicks. The ability to easily sex day old chicks by their feathering is a tremendous benefit to hatcheries which would otherwise be forced to manually sex their chicks (i.e. hire experts who inspect baby chick genitalia bird-by-bird) which is required in most breeds.

The other main benefit to sex-linked hens is that they are hybrids of laying or dual-purpose breeds and so they tend to exhibit enhanced qualities and vigor from their different parentage breeds — more typically referred to as heterosis.  Heterosis, is just a very fancy term for improved or increased function of any biological quality produced in a hybrid off-spring resulting from the mixing of the genetic contributions of its parents.  Heterosis is the diametric opposite of in-breeding; it is strength through cross-breeding.  Consequently, cross-breeding two different egg-laying chicken breeds can produce sex-linked hens who are extremely good egg layers. It is quite common to find sex-linked hens who will  easily produce 300 eggs a year or more.  This would probably account for Erin’s sex-linked hens being her best layers.

There are several different combinations of chicken breeds which can be crossed to produce either Black or Red Sex-link chickens.  I am not going to go through all of those different combinations.  However, one example of Black Sex-link parentage is to cross a Rhode Island Red (or New Hampshire) rooster with a Barred Rock hen.  To produce Red Sex-links, a common example of the cross parentage is a Rhode Island Red (or New Hampshire) rooster bred to a Silver-laced Wyandotte or Delaware hen. (See links below for more detailed information about cross-breeding for sex-links.)

There is one important characteristic of sex-link chickens to keep in mind:  the sex-determining feather colors and patterns is only displayed in the first generation of these crossbreeds.  Therefore, breeding a sex-link to a sex-link will not produce offspring with the gender-distinguished plumage.

My Frida chicken (who is my top hen and the one who’s voice always opens the main segment of the Urban Chicken Podcast’s shows) is a Black Sex-link hen.  Even though she is a mongrel according to the A.P.A., I believe she is beautiful and a really lovely hen.

WHAT TO DO WITH A BADLY BEHAVING BROODY HEN?

The next listener question comes from Corey who shared the following problem with me on the Urban Chicken Podcast Facebook page:

I’ve got a broody hen and that brat changes nests every couple of days, leaving the eggs she had been sitting on. Is that a common occurrence?

I had another hen go broody (that was my first) about 2 months ago and she was awesome, and continues to be awesome with the two chicks she hatched. Hatching via a broody hen seems so much easier than buying an incubator, trying to regulate the temp/humidity and then raising the chicks in a brooder. That first hen/chicks really got me interested in trying to take advantage of these situations.

Now this one [bad broody hen] is driving me nuts. Short of putting her in a cage with eggs, I’m not sure how to keep her on the right eggs.

Unfortunately not all broody hens actually make good mothers.  Whether a hen will perform well as a broody is partially dependent on her breed and partially related to the individual personality of the hen in question.

Corey’s intuition that it is preferable to use broody hens to incubate, hatch and care for new chicks is correct.  Truly, it can be significantly easier to put a broody hen to work than employ a mechanical incubator and brooder to hatch out a clutch of eggs.  This is, of course, limited to scenarios where you are only want to hatch out just a few new chicks at a time.

Before Corey makes any decision regarding this seemingly flaky broody hen, he needs to first due a little detective work.  Is this “bad broody” truly abandoning her eggs every couple of days or is there some other reason she is moving around?  Perhaps she is being tormented from the nest by other flock mates.  I suggest this as one of my family’s very broody bantam Cochin hens looks like a miniature vulture from having all of her head feathers pecked of by other hens who wanted into the nesting box where she set up shop. A first time mother hen (especially one who’s breed is not as strongly developed for the broodiness character as a Cochin) may get bullied off a clutch of eggs.  Trying to discover if there is a reasonable basis for this broody hen’s abandoning behavior is definitely the starting point for Corey.

If it turns out that this newly broody hens is just irresponsible with her clutch of eggs, there are two routes that Corey may take to address this issue.  The first route is to “help” this hen follow through with her broody obligations.  The best way to assist in this situation is to set up a “maternity ward” of sorts (i.e. a dog kennel with a nesting box, food and water) and lock this would-be mother hen up until she gets the job done.  Isolated in a dog kennel with a nesting box full of eggs, there is really nothing else for her to do but set and get these eggs hatched.  where she is locked up by herself in a dog kennel with the fertilized eggs ready for her attention.

The other route is to break this short attention-spanned hen of her broodiness.  The theory behind this approach is that if the hen does not have the wherewithal to finish setting on eggs on her own volition (especially when she is giving up after just a couple of days), then perhaps she does not have what it takes to hatch out eggs.  Some broody hens abandon their freshly hatched chicks.  Some hens, which are particularly ill-suited for motherhood, murder their chicks either in egg (by cracking them open early) or after they’re hatched.  I cannot advise whether murderous tendencies are more likely found in hens who lack the nature motivation to successfully set on eggs the full 21+ days with out being assisted (forced) to do so. One of the easiest and most effective ways to break a hen of her broodiness is to take her off of her nest and put her in a tub of cool water.  This lowers her body temperature and interrupts her biological imperative to set on a nest of eggs.

I am not advocating one route over the other as each person’s (and hen’s) circumstances are different and require individualized consideration of their facts.

CAN I FEED MY FLOCK GARDEN WASTE & OTHER PLANTS FROM THE YARD?

The third question on today’s Q and A show comes to the Urban Chicken Podcast from listener Kevin Leal.  Kevin wrote me the following questions:

Hi Jen,
A question that occurred to me recently is regarding garden waste.  I recently finished picking all the green beans out of my garden and I was considering using the “chicken tractor” to let the chickens eat down the rest of the plants.  I’m just not sure if it would be bad for the chickens.  I tossed a bean plant into their run, and they did eat it, but they didn’t tear into it the way they do some of the other plants I toss in.

Anyway, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to know what parts of a vegetable garden would be good or bad to tractor chickens over.  Probably not something you could focus an entire show on, but if anyone in The Urban Chicken Podcast community was an expert on that sort of thing, I would love to hear what they have to say.

Congratulations on your new pullets.  I look forward to hearing about them on the podcast.  Good luck integrating them into the flock. I haven’t tried to do that yet, since all of my hens have been together practically since birth.

I look forward to the next podcast.

Kevin

 

Fall is squarely here in Boise and, like many parts of the United States, this is the end of the most productive growing season in the backyard garden. My hens have spent the past several weeks gorging themselves on dropped plums and Roma tomatoes.  Lucky birds!

As I begin to rip out plants that are spent from my garden and prepare the earth for its fallow winter rest, the question of whether these plants can be used for flock fodder comes up.  It is important to be very mindful of what you present to your hens to eat. Generally speaking lots of vegetables, flowers, trees and other plants that you have in your backyards are toxic for your chickens to eat.  Don’t despair – most chickens when allowed to free-range in a backyard, tend to have enough sense to avoid the plants which are poisonous to them and nibble on the ones that are safe to consume. Though this is true usually, it does not mean that chickens will never try munching on toxic plants.  A little nibble here or there won’t kill your birds and need not cause you to rip out all of your foxgloves and rhubarb. I have read that occasionally birds will purposefully eat toxic plants to help themselves kill internal parasites.

The problem arises with potentially poisonous plants and your chickens when they are not free to choose.  In other words, when they are locked into a run, you need to be really careful about what you provide them to eat.  Chickens in this situation (i.e. locked up with one option for treats) will tend to eat even poisonous plants out of boredom or lack of choice when it is the only option available.

As a rule of thumb as you are cleaning out your vegetable beds for fall crops or just for winter – do not toss tomato, eggplant, peppers, tomatillos or ground cherry plants into your chicken coop.  These are all plants in the nightshade family – which makes them deadly poisonous.  Do not throw in bean plants, potato plants or rhubarb leaves, since these are also toxic to birds .  Sunflower heads/ leaves, bolted lettuces, spinach, arugula, or the tops of raddish, beet, turnip or other greens are safe and very nutritious, as are most herbs (e.g. oregano, bee balm, lovage, etc).

These are just a few of the garden common veggies to consider.  There are numerous other plant varieties regularly found in backyards that are potentially dangerous for your birds.  To help you give garden treats with more confidence to your flock, I have created a lengthy list of toxic plants not to feed your chickens. This chart should address the safety of the majority of plants that will be in your yard.

Check Out my HUGE List of Plants Toxic to Chickens HERE!  

 

CHICKEN NEWS:

• Spontaneous Sex Reversed Chickens Study CHART
• Send Info About Your Sex Reversed Chicken to UCP HERE

MAIN SEGMENT:

Sex-linked Chickens 

• Backyard Poultry Mag – Sex-Link Chickens Explained ARTICLE
• Backyard Chickens – Sex-Links for Beginners ARTICLE
• Extension.org – Sex-Linked Traits in Poultry ARTICLE
• Backyard Chickens – What is Sex-Linked Forum Discussion THREAD
• FantasticFarms.com.au – Sex-Link Breeding Combinations ARTICLE
• Raising-Chickens.org – Sex-Links Not an Actual Breed ARTICLE
• Feathersite – The Making of Sex-Link Chickens FLOW CHART
• Sage Hen Farm Lodi – Sex-Linked Chickens POST
• Feathersite – Sex-Links Explained POST 

Dealing with Bad Broody Hens 

• The Modern Homestead – Good Broody, Bad Broody ARTICLE
• Dark Brown Eggs – Taking Care of a Broody Hen Generally ARTICLE
• The Modern Homestead – Setting the Broody Hen ARTICLE
• Fresh Eggs Daily – Five Ways to Encourage a Hen To Go Broody ARTICLE
• PoultryKeeper.com – Breaking a Broody Hen – ARTICLE
• Fresh Eggs Daily – Breaking Broodiness ARTICLE
• New Life On A Homestead – Broody Hen Drama PERSONAL ACCOUNT
• Mother Earth News – Raise a Flock Using Broody Hens ARTICLE

Toxic Plants for Chickens 

• Poultry Club of Great Britain – Poisonous Plants & Toxins LIST
• Backyard Chickens – Chicken Safe Plants LIST
• My Pet Chicken – Poison Plants in the Yard LINK
• Fresh Eggs Daily – Chicken Safe Landscaping ARTICLE
• Tilly’s Nest – Top Ten Plants to Grow for Your Chickens ARTICLE
• University of California – List of Safe Yard Plants LIST 
• Poultry Keeper – Poisonous Plants for Chickens LIST
• Grit – Top Ten Flowers Your Chickens Will Love ARTICLE
• Telegraph UK – Hens in the Garden ARTICLE 
• ASPCA – Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants (with Pictures!) LINK 
• Poultry Keeper – Plants Chickens Won’t Eat (Flowers/Veggies) LIST
• Garden Web – Forum discussion of Toxic Plants and Chickens FORUM THREAD
• Chickens for Dummies – Planting a Chicken Safe Garden LINK
• Univ. of Illinois, Veterinary Medicine – List of Toxic Yard Plants LIST
• Cornell University – List of Toxic Plants LIST
• Suite.io – Guide to Plants Poisonous to Chickens ARTICLE
• Hanbury House – Toxic Plants and Chickens ARTICLE
• Poultry Help – List of Poison Plants for Chickens LIST
• Hotspot for Birds – Plants Toxic to Birds LIST
• Humane Society of United States – List of Toxic Plants for Animals LINK 

SUPPORT THE URBAN CHICKEN PODCAST:

• Support the Urban Chicken Podcast by shopping Amazon starting here: Amazon
• If Amazon is not your thing – you could also support the show HERE

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS