Egg pushed out of nest

[gemmat820]

I'm going to start by admitting I'm a newbie and 90% of what I've learned, I've learned from google, which I know isn't always the best way.

I have had a broody hen since the beginning of May and have only recently gotten the hang of candling. We never planned to breed chicks but I noticed a change in her patterns after we ended up with two roosters in our flock. We have identified about seven eggs as fertile and have begun removing all additional eggs aside from the original brood since we are too inexperienced to try and handle multiple broods at this time.

Today we went out to check in early afternoon like we usually do, and I found an egg that was pushed out of the nest and cracked. There was a bird that was moving inside, and I tried to see what I could do but she died before I could figure out what to do next. She still has six eggs. For the meantime I've arranged to have her remaining eggs moved to an incubator at my neighbor's house.

My question might be common knowledge to a lot of you but google is struggling with what I'm trying to say. Did she push the egg out because she knew something was wrong? Is this a normal occurrence? Also the rooster keeps attacking me to the point where my husband has to come out with me now when I'm collecting eggs. Is this normal behavior?

Sorry for my inexperience and I appreciate any answers you guys have to offer.

 

[FrostRanger]

The egg getting pushed out might have been due to her inexperience. Hopefully next time she'll be more careful. As for the rooster, he needs to be turned into soup. Behavior modification rarely works for roosters and even if it does, human aggression is genetic so if he's human aggressive you're more likely to have issues out of his children. The best way to get a good rooster is to not put up with a bad one. Many roosters won't turn out, but you'll never get a good one if you keep a bad one

 

[gemmat820]

The egg getting pushed out might have been due to her inexperience. Hopefully next time she'll be more careful. As for the rooster, he needs to be turned into soup. Behavior modification rarely works for roosters and even if it does, human aggression is genetic so if he's human aggressive you're more likely to have issues out of his children. The best way to get a good rooster is to not put up with a bad one. Many roosters won't turn out, but you'll never get a good one if you keep a bad one

We actually have two roosters, one of them is super aggressive and will attack me from behind if I go in the pen alone. The other one is mild. He doesn't attack and really just watches from the sidelines. The catch here is that we're very rural, we have a dog, but many of our neighbors without roosters have reporting losing birds to predators so we're afraid to get rid of the rooster. At the same time I don't really know what to do to get rid of a rooster. I don't want to hurt him, but I've got claw marks all over my legs already.

 

[FrostRanger]

Human aggression is different from protectiveness. A rooster that's busy wasting his time attacking you isn't keeping an eye out for danger at all while he's doing that. A rooster can be helpful with predators but mostly by sounding the alarm and sacrificing himself 'cause even if he has a lot of bluster a chicken can only do so much. Best way to stop predators is to have a predator proof coop and run. Having too many roosters can also be rough on your girls. Since you already have a nice rooster, I would cull the mean one. Do not rehome him as he has already proven that he's dangerous to human and if he were to attack a child he could hurt them badly. No one likes culling animals, but it absolutely needs to be done here as this will not get better otherwise

 

[gemmat820]

Human aggression is different from protectiveness. A rooster that's busy wasting his time attacking you isn't keeping an eye out for danger at all while he's doing that. A rooster can be helpful with predators but mostly by sounding the alarm and sacrificing himself 'cause even if he has a lot of bluster a chicken can only do so much. Best way to stop predators is to have a predator proof coop and run. Having too many roosters can also be rough on your girls. Since you already have a nice rooster, I would cull the mean one. Do not rehome him as he has already proven that he's dangerous to human and if he were to attack a child he could hurt them badly. No one likes culling animals, but it absolutely needs to be done here as this will not get better otherwise

We will see what we can do. I'm not sure if I have the stomach to hurt an animal on purpose so I will probably have to have my husband use his pellet gun. I've never had to cull a bird before but now I wonder if the bird that got pushes out of the nest was the result of the rooster being too aggressive. I obviously am learning as I go, but it hurts me to see any of the birds get hurt. We even contemplating rehoming the dog after he caught a couple loose birds and killed them, but he has sense started to understand his role in the backyard. Dogs, however, can be taught, I'm not so sure about roosters.

 

[FrostRanger]

Chickens have limited trainability. They can be taught certain things, but they are simultaneously smarter than you think and dumber than you think to put it nicely. They are smart in doing chicken things but they aren't the smartest birds out there and they have less desire to please you than your cat. They'll do what you want if it suits them but if it doesn't you're out of luck. Roosters in particular are ruled by their hormones - their reproductive organs are physically much larger than their brains, most of the time you're not winning against that so behavior modification is much less effective with them than with something like a dog or cat