bad broodies and an incubator

[jcinadr]

Please forgive me, I am sure this question has been asked many times before. I have a broodie hen, but it has not been very dependable (0% hatch rate). Are there issues stealing eggs from under her to go into the incubator later (over 1/2 our eggs end up under her). I guess what I am concerned about is if the eggs are sit on for x number of hours (up to 48hrs sometimes), but then bough in to sit x days cool (collecting enough to do a batch incubation) - will it kill the embryos. Would we be better off doing a continuous rotation in the incubator (bring in and start incubating same day).

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

You may run into trouble with a staggered hatch when you increase the humidity way high for lockdown, if you do that with your incubator. But I have never done a staggered hatch, just read a lot of people worried about it. You can see here and hopefully learn more:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/newsearch?search=staggered+hatch

If it were me, I would collect eggs twice a day. If you are going to have to wait 48 hours to collect eggs I'd put your broody in another area with food/water, like a dog crate or another coop until you can collect your eggs, because there is a lot of development that goes on:

http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/explore/embryology/
click on day 1 and 2

As you can see from the link, by the second day there is a beating heart.

 

[donrae]

Don't do a staggered hatch, it's just too problematic.

If your hen isn't going to brood and hatch eggs, you should break her. Perpetual brooding to too hard on her body and can cause health issues.

Collect the eggs every day, store them as advised on the sticky at the top of the section until you have as many as you want to hatch, then put them in the incubator and start your hatch.

I'm also unclear--you say she has a zero hatch rate, but is still broody--is this zero from this broody period, or previous broody times?

 

[jcinadr]

Her 0% hatch rate earlier this spring was most likely my fault, I had not set up the coop to isolate her. With 9 coop-mates you can imagine how many eggs that girl was trying to sit on. I do not know how much she is sitting now - I saw her sitting last time I went out, but my wife has since corrected me and told me she is collecting eggs in the morning when none of her girls are in the coop. (I must have just caught her laying when I saw her last). My post was probably mostly a panic since I only saw 7 eggs in the collection basket last night - I forgot to ask my wife if she had cartons elsewhere (I simply assumed that they had not been picked since Monday)..