Surprise hidden babies?! Help!

[irradiatedsnakes]

Hello all! A hen of ours, a blue jersey giant named John Doe, escaped a few weeks ago and disappeared. We assumed she was dead, but just hours ago, I found her and her apparent girlfriend, a black-breasted red cubalaya named Raphaella who's been acting weird the last week, under the chicken coop (I didn't even realize there was enough room under there for a chicken) with 4 day-ish old babies and a bunch of eggs yet to hatch.

Because the nest is in a very inconvenient place, we don't know how long the moms' parental instincts will last, and because we'd like to raise all our babies so they turn out friendly as possible, we're going to take the babies and the in-progress eggs and raise them ourselves in our incubator and brooder.

So, I'd like to ask for advice about getting these guys situated, because I've only ever worked with day old shipped chickens. Like, we don't know how far along the eggs John's currently sitting on are, would hat affect anything when taking them to the incubator? Or basically any other advice anybody's got.

 

[HappyClucker7]

I would let her raise them. Broody raised babies are just as friendly as chicks you raise yourself. They'll also be really stressed out if you take them from their mom at this point.

 

[Serenity06]

I would let her raise them. Broody raised babies are just as friendly as chicks you raise yourself. They'll also be really stressed out if you take them from their mom at this point.

Agreed though in my experience hand-raised chicks are friendlier than broody raised just because they're handled more. So if you spend as much time around them when their young as you do chicks that you raise that would fix that. If you want to remove the other eggs and incubate them that would be fine. Is there still a broody hen on them? If not then they've probably been without enough warmth for at least 2 days and I doubt they'll hatch at this point.

 

[irradiatedsnakes]

I would let her raise them. Broody raised babies are just as friendly as chicks you raise yourself. They'll also be really stressed out if you take them from their mom at this point.

Ahh, i was afraid of that- it totally makes sense, but the place they are right now is really not safe, but my only other option i can think of is moving them in with the flock...would they be at all in danger of getting attacked by the other hens, or even the roo (even though they are his babies)?

Serenity: the broody hen is still on the eggs, so I think they should be alright! I'll candle them when I get them out and am putting them into the incubator.

 

[HappyClucker7]

Ahh, i was afraid of that- it totally makes sense, but the place they are right now is really not safe, but my only other option i can think of is moving them in with the flock...would they be at all in danger of getting attacked by the other hens, or even the roo (even though they are his babies)?

You could move them into the coop. My broody raised her babies in the coop with no problems. She did a great job protecting the babies from the other chickens. It really depends on the individual chickens though. Do you think your hen will be able to protect the babies? What is her place in the pecking order?

 

[yakitori]

As long as you leave her one or two, you can raise the rest your self. The chicks that have already hatches however are likely to have imprinted on the broody already, and will probably be very unhappy when you take them away.

The friendliness of broody raised chicks will depend on whether the broody is friendly with you while broody, as well as the individual temperament of the chicks. If the hatch is too staggered, the younger ones won’t be able to keep up anyway, so it’ll be fine to raise those yourself.

Do you have an incubator to hatch the rest?