From hen to incubator back to hen?

[Dondo]

Good morning all. We had a snake get into our hen box the other day and ate about four of the 13 eggs I had under a hen. I pulled all the eggs, washed the poop off them (scared the crap out of her apparently), and then set up the incubator. What I am wondering is whether or not I can slide these up under a broody hen a couple days before they are due to hatch in order to have them hatched out in the hen yard. We did our last batch out there, and let me tell you, it was nice not having to deal with the smell of baby chicks for a month in the basement. Thanks for the advice in advance.
Don

 

[Dustystrail]

I've done it. Actually, I regularly swap/rearrange eggs under broodies depending on hatch dates, and who is known to be a good mom among other things.
You should make sure your snake is permanently gone. They will eat chicks too.

 

[Ridgerunner]

To me you have two options. You can do exactly what you said. Other than possible issues with that snake it should go well.

You can hatch them out in the incubator and slip them under her at night after it is really dark. Do this after they all hatch. There is always a possibility this won’t work but it almost always does, especially if she has been broody for a while. I’ve had a hen kill some of the chicks that hatched under her too so a broody hatch is not always perfect either. This kind of stuff doesn’t come with guarantees. And you can still have snake issues.

I did this with my last hatch, not because of a snake but for other reasons. She accepted the chicks and is taking good care of them. The first chick hatched in the incubator Monday evening. By late Tuesday all the chicks had hatched. I put them under her Wednesday night and she brought them off the nest Friday morning.

 

[Dondo]

Thanks for the answers. Unfortunately, this hen decided that she'd had enough of the nest and hasn't been back on it since the snake incident. She was broody all during our last hatching episode through part of the early raising of those chicks, and I was hoping that we'd get another batch out under a hen. Guess we'll have to hope one of her sister's comes through before this batch of eggs hatches in the incubator.