Keeping brooding hens and chicks in the house?

[M Claire]

Hello everyone,

Now that the babies have safely hatched, I am having a hard time deciding where to keep them and their two mamas.

My choices are:

a) in their own space within the coop outdoors with the others
b) in a warm (but not hot), well-lit part of the garage

I would prefer to keep them in the garage where it's easier to keep their water clean and of course to pop in and look at them as well.
My main concern is that the two mamas do have some external parasites. They are not overrun with them, but I know that they have some lice and I'm not sure about mites. The birds get DE in their dustbathing area and none of hens has a 'lice problem", but as far as I can see, it's impossible to completely and sustainably rid them of parasites, short of regularly dipping/dusting them with harsh insecticides. Nevertheless, I am leery of introducing these into our housing area.
My mind keeps running in circles. It seems like if there were really such a danger of bringing them into the house, people would not keep chickens because short of donning a hazmat suit and boots everytime you go out to the coop, I can't see how they wouldn't get tracked into the house and if they were really any good at colonizing, we'd all have them in our homes, but then there is the odd person who swears up and down that they've been infested, the thought of which is so truly horrible that it does give me great pause.

What do you all think?

 

[M Claire]

I am also uncertain of how things will go in the long run with the two mamas. They used to get along well, but they haven't seen much of one another in three weeks and for the moment, they are each hanging out in a separate corner of their shared space. Spreading food and encouraging the babies to eat seemed to help them get their minds off of the staring competition that they were having, but when they got too close, I do see one or two light, but unfriendly pecks towards unfamiliar babies.

 

[M Claire]

To add more details to the picture, Flora, my stand-in broody who hatched the one late egg that Mabel left, is the pecking one. She is pecking at the others and generally not doing very well as a mom. I think that because she only had the egg under her one day before it hatched, maybe there is a disconnect in her mind (not that chickens have very clear notions of time...), because she is acting like she should still be setting. Either that, or she just has poor instincts. In any case, I don't want her being aggressive to the babies, so I've set her off to the side in her own box and she really doesn't seem to care, wheras Mabel gets really upset when I move her from where the babies are.

In terms of parasites, I looked Flora over very thoroughly (under wings, belly, vent, neck, etc), and only saw one tiny louse on her neck region and no signs of mites.

Mabel, for her part, is as attentive and motherly towards the chick who has been with Flora for three days as she is to all the others, so she will most likely be my go-to mama this time around. I looked her over thoroughly too, expecting her to be quite a bit more affected since she's been broody for six weeks, but actually she looked really clean. I only saw one louse going up a shank. That being said, when she got off the nest after the hatch, she did take the longest dustbath (like "lady who hasn't had a shower in a month" long ).

Never a dull moment!

 

[centrarchid]

Many times I have had broody hens with chicks in garage until chicks better than 10 weeks old. Once as a kid I even had a hen incubate a clutch in my closet where she and brood ended up using a box in ground level window at night as she free-ranged. In all cases the groups free-ranged during the day. The parasites they carried were not of consequence because few if any went after humans / mammals.

 

[M Claire]

Thank you so much! That really reassures me!