Brooding help

[Liberty rd]

I have 10 hens and no roosters but 2 hen are now sitting on eggs. They won't move and have to many eggs under them. What do I do and are the eggs still good and for how long.

 

[Chickenmanjim7]

if there are no roosters just remove the eggs. There are ways to break broody hens, google it. Most of the time it involves putting them in a wire cage up off the ground.

 

[Chickenmanjim7]

The eggs should be good still as long as they are that days eggs. Float them to see if they are good.

 

[aart]

Depends on how long they have been sitting on the eggs.
Longer than a day, I'd toss them. Floating a fertile developing egg will not tell you if it's 'bad' or not.
If you want to risk eating them I'd break them each separately into a dish and look at them, then decide if you want to cook them or toss them.


If you don't want her to hatch out chicks, best to break her broodiness promptly.
My experience went like this: After her setting for 3 days and nights in the nest, I put her in a wire dog crate with smaller wire on the bottom but no bedding, set up on a couple of 4x4's right in the coop and I would feed her some crumble a couple times a day.

I let her out a couple times a day(you don't have to) and she would go out into the run, drop a huge turd, race around running, take a vigorous dust bath then head back to the nest... at which point I put her back in the crate. Each time her outings would lengthen a bit, eating, drinking and scratching more and on the 3rd afternoon she stayed out of the nest and went to roost that evening...event over, back to normal tho she didn't lay for another week or two.
Water nipple bottle added after pic was taken.