Batam hen sitting on small & big eggs- Do all eggs hatch in 21 days? - from Lea

[AmyLynn2374]

I only have 1 hive, but I love my bees too! I find them fascinating, and the honey isn't a bad thing either

Honey is good! Especially in the comb.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The 21 days for chicken eggs is just a guideline. It’s not that unusual for them to hatch a day or even two days early or late, even under a broody. There are a lot of different reasons eggs can be early or late. A big one is average incubating temperature but heredity, humidity, how and how long they were stored before incubation started, and just basic differences in the eggs play a part.

The good thing is that the chicks absorb the yolk before they hatch so they can live for three days or more without any food or water. That way the hen can wait on the late hatching eggs before she talks the chicks off the nest. The chicks start talking to the hen after they internal pip long before they hatch. That way the hen knows they are coming and will normally wait on them, but if there is too much time difference and the first hatched chicks get hungry or thirsty the hen will normally take the hatched chicks off the nest and abandon any unhatched eggs. That’s why it is important to start all the eggs at the same time. Most of the time if one egg hatches early, the rest of the eggs tend to hatch early. Sometimes they can all be late. I’ve had hatches over within 24 hours of the first one hatching and Mama brings them off the nest. I’ve had hatches go for over two full days and Mama waits three days to bring them off. I leave the decision of when to bring them off up to Mama.

One thing about your situation worries me. A hen needs to be able to cover all the eggs at the same time. Otherwise an egg can get pushed out and cool off, maybe enough for the chick inside to die. Or maybe its development slows down enough that it will be quite a bit later than the other eggs. Then it gets pushed back under and another gets pushed out to die. A lot of times you don’t get good hatches when the hen can’t cover all the eggs. If I were you I’d give serious consideration to removing some of those eggs. I don’t know how long they have been incubating. If over a week maybe try candling to see if you can tell which ones are developing.

Another thing. The way I read your post, I think the other hens have access to her nest. If so, they can continue laying with her, piling up the eggs even more. Of course the later eggs won’t hatch and they could help push viable eggs out to die. If the other hens do have access to her nest, I suggest marking the eggs you want her to hatch (I use a black Sharpie) and check under her once a day to remove any eggs that don’t belong. As long as you remove those extra eggs every day you can still use them.

Should you isolate the hen and chicks when they hatch or let her raise them with the flock? There is no one right way where every other way is wrong about this. There are advantages and disadvantages with both ways. Personally I always let the hen raise them with the flock and have never lost a chick to another adult. Most of the other hens really aren’t that interested. If a chick invades their personal space they might or might not peck it to remind the chick that it is bad chicken etiquette for that chick to invade the personal space of its social betters. Then the chick runs back to Mama. Mama normally ignores all this. But if the other hen follows the chick or seems to threaten it, Mama politely whips butt.

Most roosters accept young chicks as their offspring and might help Mama raise them. They certainly don’t attack them. Now if you wait until those chicks are old enough to make him think they are another rooster’s offspring and not his, he might not like that. You are dealing with living animals so no one can give you guarantees with any of this but his has been my experience.

If the hen raises them with the flock, she handles integration. You don’t have to worry about that. The chicks will still have to handle the pecking order on their own after she weans them, but at least integration is taken care of. Until the chicks mature enough to force their way into the pecking order they will just avoid the older chickens and sort of form a sub-flock.

The recommendation to not keep chicks as breeders if they hatch late comes from the commercial industry. Heredity does play a part in when they hatch. Commercial operations that use incubators and hatchers that can handle 60,000 eggs at a time and hatch on a deadline can’t afford to wait around a few extra days for the hatch to be over. All the chicks need to hatch on schedule. We are not commercial operations. We can normally wait an extra day or two for the hatch to finish. A whole lot of what we know about chickens comes from the commercial industry, but not everything directly translates from their operations to ours. There are reasons for these recommendations but not all of them apply to us.

Welcome to the adventure. The first hatch is normally worrying but the second is usually much easier. Good luck with the hatch.