Brooding whilst raising chicks

[redinator]

This a simple setup for a lockdown incubator (the last few days of a hatch): https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/homemade-styrofoam-cooler-incubator.79183/

 

[redinator]

This one includes a simple method to use for turning the eggs, you could incorporate it in the first build or just use this build, mostly depends on what you have on hand https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-build-a-homemade-incubator-griffin-nest.67061/

 

[McChooky]

I separated my broody so she would only have 8 eggs and she was skin and bones after she came off 23 days later .Make sure your hen is eating.They can slowly starve to death

 

[kattabelly]

i will take your advice in mind, but it seems im gonna need to make my own brooder since i heard its a pretty easy thing to make, and nobody in a 100 mile vicinity has chickens or an incubtor since i dont live in the country side, though its gonna need a lot of time and effort to maintain the brooding process since you have to manualy turn the eggs at a good rate like 12 or 20 times a day and thats one turn per hour so about 12 or 20 hours of turning and flipping wich has been proved to bring better results than the normal 3 times a day rate yet it needs a heck ton of free time that i dont have
also one last question
have you ever had a situation like this before in your coop? if so what did you do about it

Don't turn the eggs if you aren't sure exactly how far along they are but think they're in their last week. They need to get into position ready to hatch and it shouldn't hurt if they get a whole week not being turned instead of just three days.

I've not had to deal with this particular situation, sorry. I did offer to let a friend use my incubator recently when he found two hens squabbling over a secret hedge nest, but it never came to that. If I had done, I would've just let the chicks hatch and either kept them myself or given them back to him at whatever point was easiest to integrate with his older birds. I'm already set up to hatch and raise chicks myself though so it wouldn't have been such a big commitment.