AWOL broody hen

[togo54]

Sorry if this is in the wrong thread. Several weeks ago my wife discovered a hen that went AWOL from her former owner sitting on thirteen eggs behind a couple of Rubbermaid garbage cans. No straw, no wood shavings for the nest. Just a bunch of eggs on gravel. We live in Northwest Oregon. Are we (and the hen) wasting time expecting these eggs to hatch? If so....We wasted a 13 egg omelet.

 

[Pyxis]

Well, the eggs take three weeks to hatch so if you're beyond that you may not get any chicks. It all depends on if her former owner had a rooster. Of course, once they hatch she's probably going to take them back to her former owner's place if she can get there.

 

[togo54]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately there is a sad ending to this story. Sometime during the night something killed the hen. We have raccoons and coyotes in the area and I am assuming it was a coyote. It appears there was quite a struggle at the nest (lots of feathers) and a trail of feathers led to her carcass about thirty feet away. Two of the eggs were broken and they did indeed have chicks in them. After doing a bit of reading I'm beginning to believe that raccoons were the culprit.

 

[Pyxis]

I'm sorry If you have an incubator you may be able to save the eggs by putting them in. They have better cold tolerance when they're close to hatching so they may be salvageable if you want to try.

 

[togo54]

No I don't have an incubator but I do have a high quality dehydrator and I've read of numerous instances of folks successfully using a dehydrator so I'm giving it a try. It's an Excalibur brand of dehydrator and I put a bowl of water in it hopefully bring up the humidity. My wife found the hen on her 13 eggs on April 26'th so the math says that today the oldest eggs would be at least 24 days old. I'm not going to hold my breath but it's the least I can do.

 

[Little Chicken Girl]

Read this and am terribly curious...
Did the hatch work out?