Great pics! How did you train your dog to brood chicks? :-) I am planning to get a dog later this year (also a golden retriever) but I am nervous that it will chase the chickens.
My daughter loves the inside chicks now & won't let me give them back to the hen, lol. So it looks like we will be brooding them inside. At least it's only 2, so hopefully they will not be too messy. So far the hen is doing great with her little chick outside. I suspect she will get off the nest...
Yes, so far so good. I have been checking on her today & she seems good with the chick. My husband wants to give her the other 2 back also but I am getting attached to having them inside now. :-) We'll see....
I have had a lot of drama with my hatch. I have had a broody (Orpington) sitting on eggs for 3 weeks, and when we went out of town for the last week, another hen (EE) also went broody and was squeezed into the same nesting box. I didn't really want the EE hen to hatch, cause she is a nasty...
I had a chick hatch 3 days early on my first hatch, and the hen sat on the nest for 3 more days after until the others hatched. So don't give up hope @WVduckchick
Sorry to hear that. I had two broodies last Fall that started fighting when the chicks hatched. One of them suddenly started attacking the other hen and it got pretty bloody. But I have had other broodies that got along fine together. You never know I guess. Hope the rest of your hatch goes better.
Mine do get pale when they are broody. I would check her for mites just to be sure though, cause they are more susceptible to getting mites while broody.
Thanks! I wouldn't mind having a few babies inside for a bit so maybe that's what I'll do. :-) We'll see what the weather is like in 3 weeks when they arrive.
One of my bantam Orps is broody for the third time. This time I decided to order chicks for her instead of giving her fertile eggs to sit on. I'm pretty sure she will accept them with no problem, since she has done it once before.
I ordered 8 chicks but the breeder sometimes sends extras so I...
My mama hens are still fighting! The two broodies started fighting the day after they got their chicks and had to be separated, each with her own group of chicks. For the last two weeks, I have given them separate times to free range, but I have also tried short periods of supervised free...
Sorry you guys didn't have as many hatch as you wanted. I ended up with only one hatching with the broodies, and 3 hatched in the incubator. I got 9 chicks in the mail though, so I have plenty of chicks! The hens accepted the new chicks with no problems. Unfortunately I had a problem this...
Thanks @fisherlady , we ended up using some plastic netting my husband bought for gardening. Did the trick! The broodies are left alone now & hopefully we'll have chicks safely hatching in 2 more days.