chicken incubating === broody chickens?

spankarelli said:

We don't keep our eggs in the fridge at all anymore since having a chicken coop. They don't last very long around this house with lil kiddos that love their eggs, lol. Anyway, from my reading on here and in books about chickens, you can leave them 2 weeks so long as you don't wash them. My best friend says never to leave them longer than 10 days though, if you intend to hatch them. Apparently past day 10 the hatch rate drops significantly.

The old-timers around here say that if you have older hens and leave a number of eggs in the nest like that, one is way more likely to go broody. We've had a few do that in the past few years, but not often enough for our liking so we are incubating them in the house in a homemade incubator right now. Our stupid chickens were wanting to go broody in the dead of winter more often than in the warmer months and we'd have to kick their butts off the nest to get the eggs out from under her and really make her mad. We just didn't want her hatching babies in the coop with all the big birds and then lose babies because of them pecking them or the peeps falling outta the nest and freezing to death on the floor.

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ladyh said:

I'm not quite sure this is the right thread I selected. I thought my hens were just not laying the amount of eggs they should be. I was cleaning out one of their areas and found behind a door, 10 chicken eggs...so that's where they went. They are RIR, barred rocks and black australorpes. I saw the RIR leave the next that's how I wondered what she was doing behind the door and found the eggs.

Since I don't know if I have any broody chickens, I decided to leave the eggs 10 eggs alone there, since I have enough gathered already. my question is: How long do I leave them out there before I decide that they are just there and I don't have a broody chicken? I don't want them to rot.

I usually collect eggs every day but since I didn't know some were being laid behind the door I'm hoping I have a broody hen(s).

Thanks.

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AmyLynn2374 said:

If you have a true broody you'll know it, because they will rarely leave the nest and they will make a fuss if they are in the nest and you attempt to bother them, (most do anyway.) Within 24 hours you should be able to tell. If there is never a hen on the nest when you go out, you know you don't have any true broodies. If you constantly see the same bird on the nest and they stay there instead of going to roost at night, you can figure she's broody or at least playing with the idea of being. You could also candle the eggs and see if there is any growth. RIRs are seldom broody because they've been bred not to be. Same with barred rocks. Australorps aren't known as a real broody breed, but they have a better chance as the other two you have. These are just generalities, any hen CAN go broody, just less chance with certain breeds.

The comment about not washing eggs is the logic that unwashed eggs keep longer because the bloom is still on the egg. They are just saying that as long as the eggs are unwashed they will go longer before rotting than an unwashed egg will.

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AmyLynn2374 said:

My girls don't wait for any amount of eggs, heck they'll sit on a lone golf ball if they are broody.
You breed traits in or out of chickens by only breeding chickens that have the traits you want. For production purposes certain high quality layers have only been bred with non-broody birds. After years of only breeding non broody birds and those birds being circulated and re bred and re circulated the population of broody hens for those breeds are significantly lower.

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