First time with a broody- hatch day is here-not sure what to do?!!??

[marlowmanor]

i have a question. should i put the broody hen in a different place? (like in a dog kennel in the garage) or can i just keep her in the coop?

You can leave her in the coop as long as she stays on a nest well. You may have to check her to make sure she only has the eggs you want hatched under her since other hens may lay int he box she is in as well. The easiest way to make sure she has only her eggs is to mark the eggs you put under her. You can put an X on them or the date you put them under her on them if you like. With out last broody she stayed in the coop in our normal nest boxes till a few days before her hatch when we moved her to a broody box so she has room and privacy for hatching. This time around we started our broody off in the broody box because she is a big meanie who will try to take a body part off if you mess with her so we just moved her ahead of time rather than having to move her and mess with her multiple times. If you do the dog kennel keep it in the coop area with the other chickens so she is still part of general population but seperated at the same time. It makes it easier when you let he rejoin the flock with chicks if they still consider her part of the flock.

 

[chickenreferee]

i have a question. should i put the broody hen in a different place? (like in a dog kennel in the garage) or can i just keep her in the coop?

Personally, I'd move her. I put my broody in an extra large dog crate in a quiet place where the other chickens wouldn't disturb her. Moving her will keep the other hens from harassing her or trying to lay an egg in her nest box- that way you don't end up with broken eggs or eggs that are on different days of the incubation timeline. And there's always a chance the other hens will not react kindly to the new babies at first which is another reason to keep everyone separate.

It would be best to move her at night without too much commotion.

Here are a couple threads that may be of help to you:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/162759/moving-a-broody-hen

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/213218/broody-hen-should-i-take-her-out-of-the-pen

Welcome to BYC by the way!

 

[marlowmanor]

Helga!

That is perfect!

I'm excited for you too. I hope you get a couple polish babies. How is Hazel and her baby doing? You asked in an earlier post about when they'd start laying again- I think it's about 4 - 6 weeks after the chicks hatch? Not real sure though.

Good luck with the new broody! lol

Hazel and her chick are doing wonderfully. They integrated into the flock well without issues. It's so neat to watch the interaction between them. They were using the broody box to roost in at night so we were a little hesitant to move the new broody to the box at first and take that away from them but there are plenty of other places for them to roost and we wanted to be able to have to handle this broody as little as possible because of her attitude. So she went ahead and got placed in the broody box. Now we don't have to do anymore than make sure she has food and water in there for her. She can have her privacy and we can keep our body parts!

I think we have decided that if we get another broody we are going to get some guinea or turkey eggs to hatch and sell the keet/poults. May as well make some money off broodies! We have limited space for the chickens so we can't keep adding chicks constantly. So this broody will be the last one to hatch chicks that we will keep.

 

[sumi]

I'm glad to hear everyone's moms and babies are doing well

Pics, anyone?

 

[marlowmanor]

I'm glad to hear everyone's moms and babies are doing well

Pics, anyone?

I need to get some new pictures of my broodies. Hazel and her chick and the new broody who has no name yet.

 

[SarniaTricia]

Hi all.... I have a picture of Princess and her Babies...

I thought I had taken more photos of them.........
I will have to get more.
Princess and the babies got moved a week ago when I thought I saw a rat in the coop... She has more room and no mice or rats (turns out it was a large mouse and the barn cats got it... good cats) she is now in the brooder coop with the chicks that were hatched a week before the these ones...


Princess is such a good momma....
she clucks and teaches every day... she used to be so afraid of me, but now she runs to be the first to show the babies the food when I pour it and the water when I bring in fresh... Our roo will invite himself into the brooder coop on occasion and she lets him know... puffs out and growls and spreads her wings.... He is twice her size, but she will take on the world that one.
Good luck everyone with your broodies...
Patricia

 

[Soap Junkie]

I am happy to report that my Isa Brown is a great mama. She takes such good care of the chicks. But I do have a problem. It seems that the other chickens are pretty much leaving the chicks alone. I have mama and babies in the coop in a large wire dog kenel so all the chickens can see the babies. Last week I was gone on vacation and my daughters were taking care of my chickens. I had cardboard around the bottom to keep the chicks in the cage and I guess they have tons of energy cause they were getting out! So I told my daughter to leave the door open to the kenel so that mama could go out and protect the baby if it got out, but when she tried this, the other chickens saw the food in the kenel and tried to come in. Mama chicken attacked and I guess 4 other chickens decided to attach mama too! My daughters freaked out and started flinging chickens all over the place trying to get them off of mama chicken.

So my thought is that the mama was being protective because they were trying to enter the nursery. Should I remove the nursery and see what happens? Chicks are 2 weeks as of last Satruday and they are getting big so fast! Yesterday I had the mama and babies outside, I let one other chicken out just to see what would happen. The chicken was scratching around the outside of the coop looking for bugs when a few of the babies came over to her to see what she was doing. It was so funny because the chicken spotted the babies and got a look of panic on her face and was trying to get away from the babies as fast as she could, but too late mama spotted her and gave her a good peck first. The second chicken I let out was over walking around the babies with no worries, mama came over and fluffed and stood tall and the chicken squated down and that was it, she let this one by the babies no problem. Chickens are wierd! Should I remove the kenel and see what happens?

 

[chickenreferee]

Your momma is in a similar set up to Ida and her babies. The other hens can see them through the fence, but they aren't allowed inside. So far so good when I let them out for short bits of time into the yard with everyone. The chicks stay with Ida and everybody pretty much minds their own business. I've introduced chicks before (without a broody) so I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not. I've not really ever had a problem short of pecking to establish flock order. Sounds like your Momma hen was none too happy about being intruded on by the others and was protecting her chicks from what she perceived as a threat.

Maybe you could do supervised visits until the chicks get a little older and bigger or until you are comfortable that everyone will get along?

I still don't trust my hens with the babies this small, in another couple weeks though (they will be a month old) I think they'll all be running together 24-7.

Glad to hear the 'family' is doing good!

 

[marlowmanor]

I think the new broody's name will be Maria. When I went to gather eggs this afternoon I noticed that Maria was not on the nest and also saw that one egg was kicked out of the nest. So I opened the brooder box to put the egg back in the box. The whole time I was so afraid she was going to attack me and seeing that my head was the main part in the broody box I feared for my face and eyes!

I discovered that there were only 5 eggs in the nest. I looked everywhere in the broody box to see if the missing egg was hidden somewhere and couldn't find it or any evidence of it anywhere. DH looked when he got up too and couldn't find it. So we are down an egg now somehow.

So now we have one white egg (hoping it is a polish mix

), 2 green eggs, 2 brown eggs. I think the egg that went missing was the blue one. If it was that one it means no Ameracauna (true or mixed).

 

[Soap Junkie]

Thanks Chickenreferee, I was thinking that maybe removing the cage might make a difference. She thinks of it as the nursery and they are intruding. I think I will give it a try this weekend, slowly one chicken by one chicken.

Marlowmanor, that is why I seperated my broody, I came up with 3 eggs missing in one week, so I moved her to a new enclosed kenel in the coop and got new eggs and started from scratch. The other chickens kept laying in her box and I was having to constantly go thru the eggs to see which were hers. Maybe you could try seperating them?