Chicken adoption

[LaNaeMarie]

Can you take a group of chicks and make a chicken raise them? If so how?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

You need a cooperative broody hen, some very young chicks and lots of hopes she will accept them.

 

[chickens really]

It's tricky even for experienced Chicken people...You need a Good Broody Hen...Chicks under 24 hours old or close to it so they imprint to Momma. sometimes you can't trick a Hen to think her eggs hatched..Have a Brooder set up in case it does not workout...I would buy fertile hatching eggs if a Hen goes Broody and give her them to hatch..

 

[azygous]

On thinking you can make a hen do anything!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Chickens are living animals, each with their own personality. You don’t get guarantees with any behaviors. We can tell you what we’ve seen, we can tell you what we’d expect to happen, and maybe even what we think is the best way to approach it, but no matter what anyone posts about behaviors someone can come up with an exception.

Unless a hen is broody it is extremely unlikely she will adopt and take care of chicks. The most likely scenario is that she will just ignore them (and they ignore her since they have not imprinted on her). If those chicks invade her private space she will most likely peck them to drive them away and might kill one or more doing that. Sometimes you get a hen that actively goes out of her way to attack and kill the chicks but that’s pretty rare. Still, it happens. A dominant rooster usually doesn’t bother the chicks, it’s even possible he will help take care of them. I’ve seen a couple of stories on here where a broody hen was killed and the rooster took over raising them, but that is extremely rare. You absolutely cannot count on the dominant rooster doing this, it’s one of those rare exceptions I’m talking about above. Anything can happen with living animals.

Unless you have a broody hen sitting on a nest, don’t even think about trying to get the flock or any chicken in the flock to raise the chicks, it is almost certainly destined to fail. Don’t do it, they will probably die.

When the chicks hatch the broody hen and the chicks imprint on each other. They create a pretty strong bond. The older the chicks the less likely they are to create that bond. Some broody hens will try to mother older chicks but if they haven’t imprinted on her they won’t have it. These broody hens can sometimes get fairly violent trying to force the chicks to obey her. It can work the other way too. If the chicks imprint on her but she does not accept them she can hurt them trying to run them away. The younger the chicks are the better. I usually don’t have any problems if the chicks are three days old or younger but after that it gets more challenging. I don’t even try.

You get different stories from different people on this forum about how long a hen needs to be broody before you can slip chicks under her and get her to accept them. Some people have been very successful putting chicks under a broody after she has been broody just a couple of days. A lot of people report failure trying that. I’ve tried that twice, one worked and one did not. Again, each chicken is an individual living animal, you cannot tell what will happen until you try it. I do think your success is more likely if she has been broody for a while.

I’ve had success giving chicks to a broody hen in the middle of the day, just dump them out on the ground near her when she already has other chicks off the nest or slip them under her if she is still on the nest but has no chicks. My normal method when she does not already have chicks is to wait until it is dark and put them under her. She normally wakes up with them and life is good. I’m still down there fairly early to see how it’s going.

So is it possible to have a hen raise chicks that she did not hatch? Absolutely, many of us do it all the time. But you need a broody hen and the chicks need to be very young.

 

[LaNaeMarie]

Thanks everyone