Born to Hatch!

[gordonburrito]

Our hen Scrappy has gone broody several times now and this time we have decided to let her hatch some chicks as a means to break her.....hopefully for a longer period of time this time. Right now she goes broody about every 3 months or so. The only problem is we don't really want to expand our flock. Chicken math is ebil! So, the plan is to keep one and only one pullet and give the rest away. We are also considering giving one of our adults away (all about 1 year old) to keep the number at 6. So, what we did was ordered 12 pure breed Ameraucana eggs (no they are not Easter Eggers this is a reputable breeder). She advertized them as Black - Blue splash. I personally like the Black Ameraucanas the best followed by wheaton. One egg was cracked during the shipment so we have (hopefully) 11 fully viable eggs. They were quite expensive for an experiment but we wanted good quality chicks that people would gladly take for free. We live in the Central Missouri area, so I'll be driving them somewhere in a reasonable radius from our house. As far East as St Louis and as Far West as Eastern Kansas and of course north and south of that. We gave our last excess chicks to a family in Springfield

. Anyhow no need to count our chickens before they hatch but I have full confidence in our Broody hen Scrappy. She is a champ. We had her practicing in our garage on some golfballs and unfertilized eggs. I moved her this morning which she did not like and replaced some very warm golf balls with a clutch of 11 light blue eggs. She was like...."Hey Hey how dare you move me......OHHHH..... look at those....those are new..... I think I'll sit on those eggs!" and immediately began to expertly move them around. I came home from work and you can't even see them under her. I will keep this thread updated. The eggs, if they are viable, should hatch somewhere around May 27th. Scrappy usually goes broody for over a month when sitting on a empty nest, so I have full confidence in her staying power.... having said that I hope she doesn't go broody again for a while after this experiment..... else she's going to need a new home. It would be very hard to give her away though as she is a very friendly chicken.

 

[Sorin]

Hello! I just went through the same thing yesterday with my BO! She has been "contemplating" going broody for a month now. She has been hanging in the nest boxes for a couple of hours a day until I pull her off but the other day she kept going back in no matter how many times I pulled her off. Then 2 nights ago she was sleeping in he nest box on nothing, so yesterday I collected some eggs and put them under her, she was so happy, and started arranging them. So if all goes well she should hatch on the 27th or 28th. Good luck!

 

[pdsavage]

I have been waiting for any of my hens to go broody,finally have one.I guess if you don't want more its a bad thing huh....

 

[gfcm]

Scrappy is pretty! I have 5 BSL's. Is this the 1st time she's gone broody? How old is she? I'm wishing one of mine would go broody

 

[gordonburrito]

No she is a little over a year old and has gone broody 4 times. Once during the winter and a couple of times last summer. We broke her quite quickly the first time but I gave up when she went broody the second time and then when she pulled out all her feathers in the dead of winter I was scared to death to even try to break her because she was naked in the front

. She lays every day when she's not broody, which as you can imagine has been off and on. I almost fell over last time she finally broke and found a strange light brown egg in the box. For a second, I thought..... OMG my Easter Eggers blue paint gun is busted.... but then looking at old egg pictures I realized that she was finally laying again. She squats for me, and likes pettings, and is really quite pleasant. The only thing wrong with her is she's quite loud when somebody is in her nest box and she wants to lay. I can really see the benefit of a broody hen IF you want to multiply chickens in a care free sort of way since she knows just what needs to be done. She is a pet chicken. The egg production is secondary. The biggest problem is really the forever occupying one of my two nest boxes.....which can cause real traffic jams and tempers to flare with the others.

 

[gordonburrito]

So, Scrappy's broodiness is extremely hard core this time....now that she has real eggs. Tell you the truth I'm a bit worried about her. She's not getting up for food or water and is looking a little washed out.....

 

[CCourson05]

Kick her off the nest once a day.

 

[gordonburrito]

Well Friday is "hatch day".....I guess. This whole experience has been eye opening. Brooding, when eggs are involved, is a grueling experience for the hen. I threw her off the nest today and she kind of smells like a sweaty chicken armpit. Her vent feathers were all poopy. I cleared her vent off but I'm going to need to give her a chicken bath when this is all done. She stopped briefly to eat and to get some water. Friday will be day 21. Anybody know how long I ought to wait beyond that date? The rest of the flock is in a state of disarray. The top position is once again held by Edna (our Australorp) but the rest of the ranks are now less stable. Lots of fights over nests boxes and loud chickens that were previously quiet.....broken eggs. Scrappy needs to come back and put the smackdown on our girls

....once she's recouped her strength of course.

 

[gordonburrito]

Well Friday was a complete and utter flop. In fact I learned something. A few weeks ago our broody "kicked out" 2 eggs from the clutch. They were way in the back. My thought was "stupid hen" can't keep eggs under her. Well I put them under her and Thursday night there is a terrible stench in the basement. We find that she's stepped on one of the rotten eggs and the goo is everywhere. We get that cleaned up only for her to step on the second. Apparently she knew all along they were bad. "Stupid human". We were very worried the goo had killed then chicks.....

We'll today, a day late, we woke to find a completely hatched chick!!!!!!

My wife says she heard some egg cracking so there is no telling how many actually survived. But, our broody worked!. She needs a massive chicken bath and when things get settled down I'm going to buy her a dozen store eggs for her and her brood to munch on. I will post chick pictures later when things get dried out and fluffed up.....