Brooding hen questions

[Keggen]

I suspect I might possibly have a brooding Black Australorp, but I'm not positive. Yesterday my daughter gathered eggs and like usual she carefully reached under the hens who were laying and took about 4 out from a BA. The hen kind of snarled at her with a hissy sound. She always takes multiple eggs out like that though because even though we have 7 nesting boxes they only use 3 of them (for 21 hens!)

Last night I went to close the coop and saw the BA down in a nest and I worried she might be ill. I have one injured hen who hurt her leg and she has been sleeping in one of the boxes so I thought maybe that was the deal with this BA.

I tossed out BOSS and scratch before turning off they light and all the hens and rooster were eating except her and the injured one. I turned off the light and went to check her with my red night light thing and she would not get off her nest easily. I had to tip the box to get her to move and even then she only went on to the ledge where the boxes are but did not go down. Under her were 2 pretty eggs!

Now the problem is that my daughter recalls the snarly BA being in a different nest than this one, so I'm not sure if she was the one with multiple eggs under her or not.

Does this behavior sound like brooding? This would be my first so I'm really clueless.

Ironically I have 30 good eggs in an incubator going on day 16.

I'm wondering if I should take any of the eggs laid today and put them back under her or not. We have good fertility so the odds are good for them. I Derek bad that we may have taken eggs she had just started. Actually those are on my counter from yesterday, should I give her some from those? Does it matter? Lol How many could she realistically handle?

She was not showing signs of illness or injury but I'm going to check again today just to make sure. Any advice for me? It's still cold and snowy here so I worry about the temp outside when they hatch.

Also is there any way I can somehow incorporate the incubating eggs with the ones she hatches, or will she see them as "strangers"? How many chicks could she take care of once hatched?

 

[scratch'n'peck]

It sounds like she is broody. Mine often puff up when I touch them when broody, too. She could raise a brood that she hatches, but I am not sure she would accept chicks that were hatched at a separate time.

 

[Ridgerunner]

My test to see if a hen is truly broody and can be trusted with eggs is that she has to spend two consecutive nights on the nest instead of on the roost where she normally would go. There are a lot of other signs that a hen might be broody but I’ve had hens act broody that were not broody enough.

Eggs and hens come in different sizes. Some bantams might struggle to handle 4 or 5 full sized eggs. But I normally give a Black Australorp a dozen eggs of the size she lays. I have seen hens hide a nest and hatch 18 chicks. I once gave a Black Australorp 15 incubator chicks to raise and she raised them all, but that was a little later in the year and it was warmer. I think no more than a dozen of the size she lays would be a good number for you this time of year where you are. By the way, thanks for including your location. It makes answering this question easier.

You can store eggs for a week without much of a problem before you start incubating them. Just don’t keep them in really cold or warm conditions. Your house is probably OK though is you have a slightly cooler place that would be better. The ideal temperature is around 55 degrees but very few of us have ideal conditions and we still get good hatches. It’s best to store them standing on end with the pointy side down. That keeps the air cell in the fat end where it belongs.

Gather all the eggs you want her to hatch and start them at the same time under her. There are many different variations but you have two basic ways to handle this. One is to just mark the eggs so you can tell which belong under her (I use a Sharpie and draw a couple of circles around the egg, one the long way and one the short). Put those eggs under her, then check once a day to see if any new eggs show up. If you get any new eggs, you can use those fine as long as you remove them each day.

The other way is to fix up a predator-proof place where you can lock her in there. Give her a nest, food, water, and enough room to go poop, but not a lot of extra room. Put a couple of fake eggs or expendable eggs in that nest to see if she will accept the move before you risk a lot of eggs. Move her to the new nest after it is well dark. Most of the time they’ll accept this move but occasionally she will break from being broody. That’s why you don’t want to risk the eggs.

Hopefully you will get way too many in your 30 egg incubator hatch to give her all of them. She needs to be able to cover them for a couple of weeks to keep them war at night. If you want you could slip some chicks within a day or two of hatching under her at night after it is well dark. You are dealing with living animals so it is always possible she will reject them, but the odds are really good she will take them to raise.

I’ll subscribe to this thread for a couple of days. If she is truly broody and you have further questions get back to us. If I don’t catch it, someone else probably will.

Good luck!

 

[Keggen]

Thank you so much! This is really helpful info. Im a little more sure she is brooding but we still had a little confusion today. It's tough because we have 5 BA's that all look alike, only one of them is distinguishable because of some temporary feather loss.

So today when we went out there no one was on the nest but there were actually 3 eggs, not just 2 that I thought I saw last night. So either she laid another one or in my hurry I didn't see it yesterday. A few minutes later my daughter saw a BA in the neighboring nest but only momentarily. We had a brief conversation and when she went back in that neighboring nest was empty again and a BA was on the broody nest that had the 3 eggs.

She threw out some scratch, BOSS and put down a pan of mush from the house but that BA did not come out to eat any of it. She finished her chores and took 3 of the eggs from yesterday and slipped them under the hen. She said the hen snarled a bit and got poofy but that was it.

Hours later when she closed up she said the hen was still on the nest! I take it this is a good sign, I'm just a little confused about the BA that was temporarily on the neighboring nest, I'm not sure what that was about or if it was even the same hen.

So she has 6 eggs that were started within approximately 12-15 hours of each other, give or take. Is that going to be ok? I'm actually thinking one of the eggs we gave her is not fertile (but I'm hopeful so I figured I'd give it a shot) so she has 5 with a good chance because they are almost positively fertile. If it's a dud like I suspect will she kick it out of the nest soon, once she figures out it is no good?

I like the suggestion to mark the eggs so we know which ones are hers. I'm going to try to do that tomorrow if she cooperates. I'm just worried that if I pester her she may stop brooding, is that possible?

This is so exciting!! I have one other small coop but it is not really set up for anything yet because it is so small. The previous owners had it and it was in bad shape. I'm thinking it is only about 4x8 maybe, but should I get it fixed up for this hen and her chicks? Or is it ok to leave her in with the others in the regular coop?

Sorry for any typos- I'm using my phone and it sometimes changes my words!

 

[Ridgerunner]

A common way to mark a hen so you can tell them apart is to use leg bands or colored zip ties on the legs but that doesn’t help when one’s got her legs tucked under her on the nest. The only way that works is to go look at all the others and see which one is missing.

I still can’t tell if you have a broody worthy of eggs or not. I’ve had plenty of hens that are laying eggs ignore it when food is put out. Some have been protective of the nest when they are just laying. One of the signs of a broody is that when she is off the nest eating and drinking, she usually walks around fluffed up and making a constant pucking sound. I’ve had hens that were not committed to being broody do that too. It’s not an absolute guarantee she is ready for eggs. That’s why my test is two consecutive nights on the nest instead of roosting.

That 12 to 15 hours separation should be OK. It’s not the ideal situation but now that you’ve started there is no reason to switch. Eggs don’t all hatch at the same time. The chicks absorb the yolk before hatch so they can go about three days without food and water if Mama decides to stay on the nest to hatch the late eggs. Broodies can hear chicks in the shell peeping if they are close to hatch and will usually stay on the nest until they hatch. But it the ones that have hatched start getting hungry, she’ll normally abandon unhatched eggs and take care of the ones that have hatched. That’s why it’s best to start them all at the same time.

I’ve never had a hen kick a non-fertile egg out of a nest but my nests have a high enough lip on them that a hen would have to work to get an egg out. You may have read on here that a non-fertile egg will go rotten and blow up. That’s not really true. If any egg, fertile or non-fertile, gets bacteria inside it that egg will “rot” and is a danger to blow up or just leak a real stinky liquid. Whether the egg is fertile or not fertile makes absolutely no difference. If your eggs are dirty, either smeared fairly heavy with poop or even mud, the chances of it getting bacteria inside goes up, but a normal unwashed clean egg hardly ever gets bacteria inside. Don’t stress yourself about it blowing up.

If she is truly broody, you can pick her up and throw her out of the coop door. It won’t make any difference to her. She’ll either grab a bite to eat and something to drink before she goes back to the nest or she’ll immediately head back to her nest. If she’s not truly broody yeah she may stop being broody if you disturb her but she wasn’t really broody to start with.

I don’t quite understand that “if she cooperates” thing. I’m teasing. I really do understand especially if you don’t have experience with a broody. You’re not sure of yourself because of that lack of experience. One of my chores as a kid was to gather eggs every late afternoon. If we had a broody, I had to check under her and take any eggs that were not marked. As long as you collect them daily they are still good to use. Some of those broodies were pretty vicious. I really didn’t want to check under them. But no way was I going to tell my father I was afraid of a chicken. You do what you have to do.

If she is truly broody you are not going to break her from that by looking under her or marking the eggs. If she is one of the really vicious ones with a strong bite you might want to wear gloves and long sleeves to check.

Hens have been hatching eggs and raising chicks with the flock for thousands of years. They are living animals. Sometimes good or bad things happen. No one can tell you what will happen with yours. My broodies incubate the eggs and raise the chicks with the flock. Some people isolate a broody when she is incubating, some isolate the broody and her chicks while she is raising them, and some people isolate for both and worry about integrating the broody and the chicks later. There is not right way or wrong way to do it. There are some benefits and some risks with all of them. It’s not that you absolutely have to do anything one certain way. It gets confusing because you have so many different choices. They all usually work but it’s always possible with any of them you could run into a problem.

It’s up to you to decide which way you want to try it. Whatever you decide, you are not wrong to try it that way because it usually works. Even if something bad happens you were not wrong to try it that way. Something bad could happen any way you try it. But it usually doesn’t.

 

[Keggen]

Last night I went out with my night vision light and carefully took her out of the nest. That was a challenge! She just did not want to go! Apparently other hens must have been in her nest earlier in the day because I saw 11 eggs! Geesh. I marked all of them and since I wasn't sure which were the newest ones I just left them all in there. I hope that is going to be ok. I plan to check again tonight and take away any additional ones that aren't marked.