Recent content by Rehoboth

  1. Rehoboth

    what to do with a failed brood

    Chicken math struck. We intended to buy 4 chicks, and somehow ended up with 16, including 4 silkies, bc my daughter wanted silkies and the others were on sale for 50 cents! It's a cold night here in western PA, so hopefully that will work out ok. We're keeping a close eye, and also have a...
  2. Rehoboth

    what to do with a failed brood

    Thanks for all of your advice. I am looking for some chicks in the area. How young do they need to be to transfer successfully? Would 2 or 3 day old chicks work? Of course people don't post on craigslist saying they're going to have chicks in a few days :) We feed the hens layer mix and...
  3. Rehoboth

    what to do with a failed brood

    I have a broody hen (black copper Marans), but her clutch seems to have failed. She started with 12 eggs (from our flock). Over the first week, she seems to have eaten 8 of the eggs. At first we were afraid she had become cannibalistic and would have to go, but then she stopped eating them. Then...
  4. Rehoboth

    disappearing egg under broody hen

    Would a broody hen ever eat one of the eggs she's sitting on? Earlier this spring we had a black copper Marans (less than a year old) go broody. We put 11 eggs under her, and 7 successfully hatched. 1 was broken by another hen a couple days before hatching, one pipped but failed to get all the...
  5. Rehoboth

    please help - should we give water to new chicks without food?

    Thanks! We were wondering why they hatched so much sooner than we were expecting, on day 19. Would the hot temperatures - highs in the 90s for half of their incubation - have caused them to hatch faster?
  6. Rehoboth

    please help - should we give water to new chicks without food?

    This is our first time hatching eggs. We bought some random eggs and put them under a broody hen. 21 days was supposed to be Sunday, and I was going to buy chick feed tomorrow. But the eggs have started hatching. If I don't have feed until tomorrow morning, should I give the chicks water for the...
  7. Rehoboth

    is this normal behavior for a broody hen?

    Thank you for all the answers! We're in SW PA, so pretty warm (highs around 80, except yesterday a lot cooler). The eggs were certainly still very warm whenever we checked on them. She has food and water available in her coop, and room to move around, though no dust bath inside. She is young...
  8. Rehoboth

    is this normal behavior for a broody hen?

    We have a pullet (hatched last September; black copper Marans from a hatchery) who went broody last week. After nearly two days of her sitting on a nest in one coop we moved her to a nest in the identical location in our second coop and put fertile eggs under her. The two coops are identical...
  9. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    That's true. I'm not ready to invest in more equipment right now, the next priority for infrastructure needs to be the coop upgrades. And I kind of like the idea of letting the hen have fun hatching, and we have fun watching her. If none of our hens turn out to be interested I'll have to...
  10. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    That's really helpful to know, thanks!
  11. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    That sounds like the kind of thing we need to do. Our coops are not conducive to partitioning or having a broody inside, so a mini-coop seems like the way to go.
  12. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    Oh believe me, I am very frustrated with the pre fab coops. What happened is, we moved from a townhouse to a place with 5 acres, but in a municipality which didn't allow chickens. It took them two years after we moved to get around to allowing chickens. In the meantime, my husband found used...
  13. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    We have a gold laced Wyandotte, a black copper Marans, a silver spangled Hamburg, 2 leghorns, 2 RIR, 2 anconas, and 3 Easter Egger - hatchery mystery box. I don't think any of those are famous for being broody, but I'm hoping at least one of them will have an interest.
  14. Rehoboth

    what age to expect hens to go broody

    We have 12 hens who are 20 weeks old, so we are eagerly waiting to see the first eggs. Also one rooster. My question is, since we first got into keeping chickens last fall, we are having so much fun with them, we are thinking about expanding to raise birds for meat. Apart from the question of...
  15. Rehoboth

    Help ID mystery chicks

    Yes, I was just thinking that. My original plan if there was a rooster was to keep a completely mixed barnyard flock and just let the breeds get completely muddled. But if there's a Marans rooster and a Marans hen, I could only hatch the darkest brown eggs, and although the feather coloring...
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