Newbie with egg development/hatching concerns/questions

I am not well educated in chicken terminology or the like, so my apologies if I mangle any terms or phrases. I also apologize if my post is too long- wasn't sure if any of the background info would help. I am chicken ignorant!

My husband decided to get some chickens because he wanted fresh eggs. This was totally his "baby" as I was not a chicken enthusiast and had too many other things going on.

The original "flock" was a one-eyed Bantam rooster, named Elvis, and one hen, named Prissy, that he got from his granny when her health started failing.

Prissy died this past winter and then one of his friends gave him 3 Cochin? hens. 2 of the hens seemed to be pretty good layers and hubs got his fresh eggs. Then he decided to see if they would set and hatch some of the eggs. One hen (my favorite when I recently got sucked into the whole process) ended up sitting on a nest of about 7-8 eggs.I was candling the eggs weekly to keep an eye on how things were progressing.

My daughter and I were heading out of state to visit my family after her graduation, and my best calculations showed that the eggs should hatch about 7 days before we got back home. My husband called me about 2 days before the eggs were due to hatch and told me that the hen was dead and all of her eggs were gone. No noticeable marks on the hen. My suspicions were a chicken snake and a few days later my husband called to say he had caught the snake eating eggs in the other hens nest.

Daughter and I returned home and I candled the eggs in the other hens nest-she's a very tolerant hen but I'm not sure how often I should be checking these nest. ( I need to name these hens!) The eggs were all in different stages of development. I don't know if the hen layed more after the snake ate some of them or if the other hen was also laying eggs in her nest...
Anyway, about 6 days ago I heard an egg cheeping and the next morning we had one black and yellow chick. Now, the hen is still setting on her eggs while mothering the chick.
Okay here comes the part where I really mangle some terminology--
The hen has 5 eggs on her nest.
Two eggs seem to be within day 15-18. I cant really see any movement in one, but I'm pretty sure the other one has movement.
I removed one egg because after a week there was no sign of development, no veins, nothing.
One egg looks to be maybe day 8 with a long "stringy thing" trailing behind the baby but I have no idea on movement. I want to say I see movement but not sure.
The last egg seems to be at day 10-13 but no noticeable movement.

I have no idea if the movement of lack of it means anything because for all I know it could be movement from me moving the eggs when I'm candling them.

So at this point do I just wait to see if any more eggs hatch? How long do I wait?

My other question is: We have nesting boxes that sit about a foot off the ground. Once the chick started moving around, it would somehow find its way out of the nest and I would find the hen on the ground with the chick under her. She was abandoning her nest to stay with her chick. This happened a few times before I moved the nest. I moved her nest to ground level (probably wasnt supposed to) and she went right to it.
Should our nesting boxes be on the ground? Can chicks find their way back into nesting boxes that are off the ground but have a ramp?

Although I didn't want chickens and don't know much about them, I've gotten sucked in and want to do things the right way or in a way that's best for the chickens. Any advice, links to articles, etc is appreciated!

Julie

You have a lot of issues there. It’s a little hard to know where to begin.

When putting eggs under a hen for her to hatch, you should collect all the eggs you want her to hatch, mark them so you know which ones belong, and start them all at the same time. That way they should all hatch at the same time. You should then check under the hen every day and remove any new eggs that show up. As long as you remove then every day, they are still good to use.

When a hen goes broody, she stops laying eggs, but other hens will lay in her nest. If you allow those new eggs to stay, you get what we call a staggered hatch. They are a mess. The chicks can go maybe 3 days without eating and drinking because they absorb the yolk before they hatch, but eventually the hen has to take them off the nest to find food and water. She abandons any unhatched eggs so they die. She chooses the hatched living chicks over unhatched chicks practically all the time.

You saw a bit of that when the chick fell out of the nest. On that, how high is the lip on the nest? I’ve never had a chick fall out of a nest but I have a fairly high lip on my nests.

You can candle the eggs daily if you wish. It should not cause any harm to the eggs or upset the broody. I never candle eggs under a broody, it’s just not convenient. I usually only candle eggs in an incubator twice, once around day 7 or 8 to see what is going on, then again on Day 18 when I take out the turner and increase the humidity. Day 18 is when I remove any clear eggs.

Don’t worry whether you can see movement or not. It’s nice and exciting when you see movement but lack of movement doesn’t mean anything.

How long do you wait? You have a few options, but with a staggered hatch they are not real good ones. You can do nothing and just wait until the hen comes off the nest. That might be 10 minutes from now or it might be 3 days after that first chick hatched. Any eggs left behind die.

You can take any eggs left and put them in an incubator or try to make a hatcher. That’s where you try to keep the eggs around 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity pretty high. This is tricky and often involved light bulbs, a thermometer, damp paper towels or regular cloth towels, and some luck. You might get some more to hatch and could possibly give them to the broody to raise. Though it is a good idea to be ready to raise them yourself if she won’t accept them.

You could take the chicks away as they hatch and raise them yourself. If you take the chicks away before she abandons the nest, she may stay on there and try to hatch the rest. Or she might not. Again, you can try giving the chicks back to her when she finishes hatching, but she might or might not accept them. The older they are the less likely she is to accept them.

Hopefully you can get something out of all this that helps you. It’s not an easy situation, but believe it or not, it’s not all that unusual a situation either. Lots of people go through it the first time with a broody.

By the way, welcome to the forum. I’m glad you joined us, just wish it were an easier situation.

Ridgerunner:

Your post was very helpful and I appreciate the advice!
I was actually putting feed and water in the nest after 24 hrs of the chick hatching.
The lip on the nest isnt very high, especially with the bedding in the nest. Probably 2 inches over the bedding.

I decided to remove all the eggs from the nest this morning. Baby chick is 5 days old and they are leaving the nest for longer amounts of time so I feel that the prognosis wont be good for the other eggs. My biggest regret in all this is that I don't like the thought that something we did, or rather didnt do, had a negative impact on the hatching of the other eggs. To me, a life is a life, no matter what the species.

I will definitely follow your advice about collecting eggs IF we choose to hatch any more.Do the collected eggs need to be kept at a certain temp until we give them back to the hen or just at approximately the temp of the coop?

Thank you again for the advice and for the welcome. Off to explain all of this to my husband

Tiggrsbounc said:

 I will definitely follow your advice about collecting eggs IF we choose to hatch any more.Do the collected eggs need to be kept at a certain temp until we give them back to the hen or just at approximately the temp of the coop?

Click to expand...

This article is more about using an incubator than a broody, but it has a lot of good information on storing eggs that is good for either case.

Texas A&M Incubation site
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/...e-Cartwright-Incubating-and-hatching-eggs.pdf

The main thing in all this is to remember that you don’t have to follow the recommendation exactly. For example, most of us don’t have a place that is a perfect temperature for storing eggs, so just do the best you can. I store them in the house at 68 degrees in the winter and 78 degrees in the summer and usually still get some pretty good hatches.