This post is a couple months old but I'm chiming in anyway. I've had an AC rooster on a mixed flock for several years. His babies are always have grey-black legs, combs, and tongues. Most of the meat and bones we have had are marbled... predominantly white but with patches of black. Skin could...
Yeah, I have had to incubate all my eggs until this year. 6 years without a broody hen and suddenly I have 5 broody hens ages 1-3 years. That's half the hens in my flock!
These broody hens have hatched 8-12 chicks each. In fact, I took several eggs away from the latest broody hens so they...
I've been keeping chickens for about 6 years and, until recently, never had a broody hen. I was so excited when one of my blue laced red wyandottes set a clutch of eggs back in June. And then...
... another BLRW went broody, and then my Buff Orpington, and then the first BLRW finished raising...
Well everybody survived the night, but the hen definitely seems done with the chicks. The good news is that the chicks are mixing freely with the flock- even feeding alongside all the hens and roosters- and everyone is being nice.
It will get down into the 60s at night, so they definitely won't be maintaining 80 degrees overnight.
I found the chicks huddled down for the night in some tall weeds in the outdoor run. After a bit of a nighttime rodeo with flashlights, we gathered 7 of the chicks and put them on the...
To my knowledge, this is the first time she has left them, so I have no idea if she will return. The other chickens were all playing pretty nice today, and I was even impressed that the chicks were wandering pretty far from their momma without any issue from the flock.
My first broody hatched 8 chicks about 3 weeks ago. So far she has been a great momma... fiercely protective and attentive. I moved her and her brood to an empty coop where she stayed with them for the first few weeks but where she had access to the overall flock. In the past 3 days she has...
I had a broody hen hatch some chicks, abandon the nest while some eggs were still pipped to move her new chicks elsewhere, and I finished hatching those eggs out in an incubator. In all, I had three incubator-hatched chicks. The first two hatched the day of and were transferred under the hen...
My coop has a divider down the middle and a separate pen so I moved the hen and her chicks to the separated side after she left the nest. I had a couple other hens behaving a bit aggressively toward the chicks that wandered out from under momma. The hen wasn't happy about the move but settled...
A quick update that all was well with chicks and momma this morning.
Unfortunately, I hear more peeping coming from the incubator so there may be at least one more chick I will try to sneak under the hen. I'm a bit nervous that the latecomers will be harder to integrate so will have a brooder...
My notifications were turned off and I missed oldhenlikesdogs reply! I just moved both chicks to the hen. I distracted her front while I plopped the chicks behind her. She accepted them immediately, clucking and opening a wing for them to get under her. I'll check on things before I go to...
Follow up question: We are now up to two chicks in the incubator. One will be too wet to move out there tonight.
What are my best odds for success: Moving the dry one out tonight and the wet one out tomorrow night? Or both at the same time (tomorrow night?)?