Broody Hen - I gave her fertilized eggs!

A sitting hen will naturally leave the nest every 3 or 4 days. There is no need to needlessly aggravate her by picking her up every day to let her eat, drink, and defecate. Hens are born knowing how and when to do these important tasks. The only thing that you will accomplish is to aggravate your brood hen into abandoning her nest.

Now say that your setting hen left the nest to perform the actions above and while she was eating or drinking another hen decided to lay in the natal nest. When your setting hen returns and finds an intruder on her nest, there is going to be a hen fight for the ages, with some eggs or all the eggs getting broken. If only some of the eggs are broken there is also the possibility that the contents of the broken eggs will stop up or seal off the pours of the hatching eggs resulting in suffocation of the embryos and a complete failure to develop or hatch. So it is a good idea to let your setting hen have her own little pen to sit in, and in the dead of the night, move her there, nest box, and all.

After she has hatched, a setting hen is more than capable of doing all of her biddies heavy fighting for them. If she so much as sees another hen say Boo! to her babies, the fight is on. If a hen is sitting on her own eggs or eggs the same size as the eggs that she normally lays, about 15 eggs will constitute a setting of eggs. Everything being equal, you will almost always hatch a higher % of chicks if you set say 16 eggs, than you will if you only set 8 eggs. Right now I won't go into why. Also, sitting hens often actually pick up their eggs by cradling or holding them between body and wing. Disturbing a hen on the nest therefor can result in your brood hen dropping her children on their heads as it were, this is not good. I forgot how many times poultry scientist say that a hen moves or shuffles her eggs per day but it is between ten to twenty times each and every day.
 
That was good Krista. I followed my instincts with my first mother hen. Now I have one that was disturbed by hens and I don't know if she was off them for too long. On a warm 17C day is that a problem. thanks
 

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