ashleetong
Hatching
- Sep 20, 2016
- 1
- 0
- 7
I have a broody who I bought a dozen fertile eggs for, she has sat on them for 18 days now, scooped them straight up and was chuffed.
Our egg production of 5-6 per day has dropped off to 2-3, the darker nights are setting in and so we were not surprised.
I noticed 2 days ago that the broody had some eggs exposed, I was disappointed to think this close she let them go cold, I left it to avoid disturbing any that were still kept warm and yesterday I saw 3 eggs exposed so I removed them, to my surprise they were not marked with pencil as the hatching eggs were, they were fresh eggs from my layers, this morning I went to check again and removed 5, again, none with a pencil mark - I then lifted the chicken and found more eggs than I could count before she fought her way back to her eggs, my guess is there was late teens plus the 8 I removed over the two days, in total she must have had over 20 eggs.
She's been spread so flat to try and cover them all and just couldn't, she's banked all the straw up around her to form a nest.
What shall I do? Just keep removing the stolen eggs that appear at the edges?
She only has a few days until hatching, my only hope is she's not been moving all the eggs around pushing the fertile eggs to the edge in the cold and keeping the layers eggs toasty warm.
Anyone have experience of a broody grabbing this many eggs?
Our egg production of 5-6 per day has dropped off to 2-3, the darker nights are setting in and so we were not surprised.
I noticed 2 days ago that the broody had some eggs exposed, I was disappointed to think this close she let them go cold, I left it to avoid disturbing any that were still kept warm and yesterday I saw 3 eggs exposed so I removed them, to my surprise they were not marked with pencil as the hatching eggs were, they were fresh eggs from my layers, this morning I went to check again and removed 5, again, none with a pencil mark - I then lifted the chicken and found more eggs than I could count before she fought her way back to her eggs, my guess is there was late teens plus the 8 I removed over the two days, in total she must have had over 20 eggs.
She's been spread so flat to try and cover them all and just couldn't, she's banked all the straw up around her to form a nest.
What shall I do? Just keep removing the stolen eggs that appear at the edges?
She only has a few days until hatching, my only hope is she's not been moving all the eggs around pushing the fertile eggs to the edge in the cold and keeping the layers eggs toasty warm.
Anyone have experience of a broody grabbing this many eggs?
