Brood Hen?

[jaayyse]

Hey guys, so I've been trying to incubate my own eggs for a while now but my first batch failed. Actually, I threw in 2 batches about 2 days apart and I decided to open one of the newer batch....turns out there was actually a baby in there developing so now I feel like a murderer. So I've still got 4 of those eggs incubating and I think if all goes well, they should hatch in a few days.

However, I noticed that for the past week, one of my females have been broody and she's now sitting on about 10 eggs. My question is do you think I should remove those eggs and incubate them myself? I don't know if she can actually manage to incubate all of them because she's not even big enough to cover all the eggs. It's probably because my other female keeps laying and this one's trying to get them all under her.

Also, I noticed that she does get up and walk around for like periods of time before going back, do you think this will "shock" the eggs and kill them?



That's what she's been like for the past week now.

 

[TwoCrows]

If she were my bird, I would go ahead and let her set on them just to see how it goes. Quail rarely go broody, if at all. It might be fun to watch the real thing in action with a quail. You could always pull out the eggs that seem to be "hanging out the edges" there as they probably won't hatch.

 

[jaayyse]

Yeah it turns out that she was sitting on about 14 eggs and she couldn't even really sit on them properly so I took out about 8 so she could actually sit on the rest. I put them into the incubator and I left the rest with her so we'll see how it goes.

 

[quadchick77]

Lucky you! Ive yet to ever have a broody quail and I even raise mine in pine shavings. I did find that when I moved mine from the wire "colony" type pens and put them into a more "brooder" type pen with the shavings , oh my gosh they were in pure heaven layen down fluffing themselves and for the first few days I thought I would get lucky and have a broody gal just because they spent so much time laying around in the new pen. Lol but as of yet no go. Can't wait to see what happens with your gal. Congrats!

 

[myfinefeatheredfriends]

Me too! I've been raising quail for years and have yet to have a hen go broody, or even attempt to build a nest. My button quail go broody like crazy but I've never had a Coturnix quail go broody. Congrats! I'd let her take care of them and see what happens.