Our hen won't stay on the eggs

Our Black Australorp has been broody for the past 3.5 weeks. She's been gifted extra eggs by the other chickens every time she gets out of the nest to go get food and water. Last night I went to check on her and she was once again sitting in the wrong nesting box (on one egg) while her clutch of 13 eggs sat cooling in the other. Upon inspection of her original clutch of eggs I found an egg shell that looked as if it'd hatched but I could find nothing of the chick. Either it hatched and was eaten (do chickens do that?) or it hatched and jumped out of the nest to go huddle with our other broody hen. Yeah the second hen has already hatched out several chicks and is being a great mother.


I candled the eggs last night and of the 13 that she had 6 of them showed no indication of embryo development so we float tested them and put 4 of in the refrigerator. The other two failed the test and went to the grubs. Out of the remaining 7 eggs all had a distinct air pocket, 4 of them had a pronounced darker spot with visible veins developed and the last three were so dark inside that I could make out no details at all. My assumption is that the last three are near to hatching.

Here is my dilemma. I need this hen to stop being broody. She goes from nest to nest and runs off any other hens that are trying to lay, the result of which is that I got 5 eggs out of 15 laying hens this weekend. Unacceptable. Is it possible to take her eggs and put them under the other broody hen that already has 6 chicks with her (the chicks are just a few days old) and let them get hatched that way? Would the other hen accept eggs from someone else?

If I can move her eggs and have the other hen hatch them then I'll do so and then work on getting this hen un-broody. My fear is that she's not being attentive enough to the eggs she has and has already killed them from letting them get too cold or will abandon the chicks once they are hatched.


Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

RichnSteph

I would leave the hen with chicks alone. I wouldn't add anymore to her bundle.

The broody is probably confused by all the eggs everywhere. You can try to give her a more private nest or break the habit.

Theres a few ways to do that. A suspended wire cage for a few days or a cool bath. I have used a cool bath. ( not cold) I filled the sink and dunked her chest in. The idea is to help bring the body temp down. I did it for maybe 20 seconds two days in a row and that was it.

The broody with the chicks needs to focus on raising chicks, not hatching more eggs.

The hen with 6 few day old chicks should be bringing them off the nest soon and might well abandon any added eggs.

I'd confine the confused broody(who keeps getting on the wrong nest) until she hatches out something then get rid of the rest of the eggs when she leaves the nest with the chicks.

I killed two chicks.....

I went out today to check on the confused hen and found her sitting in the other nesting box again while her clutch of eggs sat cold and ignored. To top it off when another hen came in to lay the confused one jumped out of the nest and ran her off. I blew a gasket. I pulled her up out of the box and dunked her in the stock tank, not submerged but enough to soak her breast. Then I went and pulled all of her eggs and broke them into the worm bin. The last two opened up to reveal moving chicks... They had the little yolk sack thing still attached and were probably a week from hatching. Poor little puff butts. The other eggs were rotted inside or not developed at all.

I also pulled four eggs out of the nest from our other broody who is now leading 6 happy chicks around the yard. Three of them had nothing going on and the fourth had a fully developed chick inside although it was already dead.

RichnSteph

Ugh! I know how you feel. I found an egg on the floor of the coop, it was marked, so I know it had been in the clutch, so I thought, hmmm must be a rotten one. So instead of putting it back, I opened it. Yeah, ugh.

AARt as usual gives good advice. I am not in favor of moving a nest, or confining a bird, but sometimes you need to, and this sounds like one of these times.

A big problem with leaving them with the flock, is just what you stated. Broody gets down to stretch her legs, and the other layers think, "OH hey, she is willing to do the work, I will just drop my egg off!" So, what I do, is mark the eggs with a sharpie, and then every 3-4 days, I take a towel down, and pull her off the nest and let her, make her walk around, take a dust bath, get a drink, while I go through her clutch, getting rid of any stray eggs. I generally hang around or come back and check to make sure that she is back where she is suppose to be.

This keeps the clutch from getting too big. If there is too many eggs under her, nearly none of them hatch. The ones on the edge get too cold and die, and then the broody hen, moves them all around, so that new ones are on the edge and they die. Pretty soon you don't have much left alive.

If you mark and set a clutch, then they will all hatch within 12 hours. Once my hens have live chicks, they leave the nest and build a fresh one on the floor. If something didn't hatch, to bad. I think the movement of the chicks under her and the peeping, shut down the broody hormone, and moves into the protection of the live chicks hormone.

Really, I think you did the right thing, breaking her. The next time, she might really do a good job of being a broody hen, or not. One never really knows with chickens.

Mrs K