I had my broody Silkie hatch out a batch of silkie chicks. This is her second brood. I didn't loose a single chick from that first brood..This time 4 hatched out, 1 didn't make it out of the egg.. I let her roam around the coop and run like last time.. but I found 1 of the chicks smooshed flat last week.. I thought it had gotten crushed by a big chicken.. walked on perhaps.. so I put in a divider to keep mamma and her 2 remaining chicks seperate from the group. It's a small space but not tiny.. food and water-er.. Today I go out and another baby is crushed dead.. What is going on?? Do I remove the remaining chick and put it under a lamp and raise it that way.. how traumatized with both mamma and baby be? Why is she crushing them???
Sometimes they die from something else, and once they are dead, they are "trod underfoot" so to speak, and flattened out. Or if something frightens the hen, her instinct is to try to cover the chicks. I had one break several eggs trying to cover the nest with hay when we tried to move her broody pen. After they hatched, she would still try to cover them when we opened the pen, to the extent we thought she would hurt them.
SO.. should I just leave the last chick and hope for the best? I cannot see it doing well if I move it alone.. to a brooder..
