Egg incubation techniques

Thanks both for the excellent info regarding brooding and flock behavior. I've not had a broody in my yard since I was a teenager! Hoping to get the experience soon, maybe even this spring!

Has anyone ever had a hen adopt chicks that she didn't hatch

I had 3 broodys with chicks year or so ago. 2 groups were the same ago and one group was 3 weeks older. I didn't have enough pens for each broody to have her own private pen so to make a long story short I picked the most appropiate hen, booted the other 2 and combined 1 hen & about 30 chicks in a brooder/grower pen.
The 22 chicks in the younger groups combined with the hen and were a normal family group. The 8 or 10 older ones (whose hen was booted) refused to merge with the younger group and chose to be aloof & stayed together in their own group. The 2 had no contact except at the feeder, where the older chicks bullied the younger ones until the hen came to the rescue squakwing & flapping and ran the older ones away till they were done eating.
Now you know why I perfer an Electric Hen.

I’ve done it a few times. Some hens will mother practically any chick but most of them form a bond with their chicks an imprint on them. The chicks will imprint on the hens too.

The bonding process starts when the chicks internal pip. The chicks start chirping, telling Mama that they are on the way and Mama will talk back. That process does a few things other than just start the bonding process. It tells the broody she has chicks on the way. They are living animals so someone can always come up with an exception, but normally once they start internal pip Mama does not leave the nest for her daily constitutional. She will remain on the nest throughout the rest of the hatch.

It also tells her to raise the humidity. Yes, the broody can and does raise the humidity during hatch. She does not do that according to a calendar, she does it when she hears that a chick is on the way.

The chicks absorb the yolk so they don’t need to eat or drink for three days or more. Some hatches drag out pretty long. As long as Mama hears chicks still in the egg that have not hatched, she will not take the chicks that have already hatched off the nest. That’s why you don’t want a staggered hatch. If the first to hatch get hungry or thirsty (and yes they have a special chirp so they can tell Mama they need food or water) before the last ones have hatched, normally the hen will abandon the unhatched eggs and take care of the hatched chicks.

The best way to give a hen chicks is to slip them under her after it is dark and she has settled in for the night. She will feel them under her and hear them chirping and think she hatched them. The bonding and imprinting has started. The younger the chicks are the better. If they are too old, the chicks may fail to imprint on the broody. She can’t control them that way. And the older they are the less likely she is to imprint on them.

While a chicken cannot use a calendar or count days, it is best for a hen to have been broody for a while before you try this. Some people on this forum have reported success giving chicks to a broody that had just gone broody but the one time I tried it I failed. She did not hurt the chicks and shared her nest with them. She even let them crawl under her for warmth, but she would not take care of them. I had to brood them myself. She had only been broody a couple of days.

The other times I’ve tried giving chicks straight from the incubator to a broody it has worked well by putting them under her after dark.

Ok thanks for the help