broody bantam? when do I move, and how many LG eggs can she hatch?

[madornato]

Plecostrum, you have some good questions. Hopefully, someone more experienced than I can help. I don't believe, though, that you can give your broody chicken chicks to take care of unless she has hatched them herself. She might attack them? I know that you can swap the store eggs for fertile hatching eggs--I just don't know if you can put already partially incubated eggs under her or not. That is a great question. Good luck to you.

 

[madornato]

Quote:
If I have another to go broody, I might decide to let her hatch in with the flock. After the chicks hatch, would I then need to move her with her chicks to another location? My nesting box is elevated, and I'm not sure how they, the chicks, could get up and down to feed and drink. Would it be safe, at that point, to move the "outside" chicken with her chicks into the brooder box in the garage with the other chicken and her chicks, or would that cause problems? Of course, this is all hypothetical. Good to know in case it does happen, which I hope it does. If I can get these chickens to hatch chicks for me, that will be a lot less work and hassle for me.

I appreciate all this help and information.

 

[Judy]

People slip store bought chicks under mamas all the time, usually at night. They adopt other chicks just fine, even other species -- I was just looking at pics of a mama with baby chicks and baby keets , have also seen this with ducks. They will also set duck or keet or whatever eggs and hatch the babies. I have given store bought chicks to a mama with chicks of her own in the middle of the day and have them accepted well.

I just leave the mama with the flock during setting and to raise them. I have a chicken wire pen in the coop built for broodies and new babies, but once the broody is setting on real eggs, it is very difficult to move her and have her stay on the nest, so I have to isolate her in there for a day or two before allowing her to set eggs. Some people have been able to move a setting broody with eggs successfully, at night, but it has not worked for me. One batch I let hatch in the broody pen. Trouble was, the new chicks could get through the wire, and did, leaving mama in the broody pen and the babies out with the rest. So I left it like this for a couple of days; the chicks would go back and forth to mama all day long. Then I just gave up and let mama out. Haven't fixed this problem and tried keeping them in the broody pen yet.

I did let a few hatch this year in the heat of the summer in the coop, but mama turned out to be a chick killer. I used to have a wonderful mama who did a great job of raising all her babies in with the flock. Wish I still had her.

It's such an individual thing; you just never know how it's going to turn out. In the old days, of course, they were always raised with the flock. And I'm sure the ones that survived were the strong ones, ones you would want to breed again.

I put 4x4's and bricks and stuff down so the babies could get to the nest or whatever, but after a couple of days of running around, they were able to jump/fly about as high as they wanted. At two or three weeks they had no trouble flying up to the 30" high roost. They didn't roost, they slept under mama in the nest, but they played on the roost. They only used my steps a few times before they were going up and down on their own. People have raised chicks who were hatched in hay lofts. They half fly down on about day 3 and everyone finds a different bed on the barn floor.

 

[madornato]

Wow, thanks, ddawn. You gave me, and others, a lot of great information. I am going to try to move the one broody cochin bantam tonight with the eggs that she has been sitting on, and hopefully, if she stays on the eggs, change out the eggs to fertile ones in a day or 2. I'll leave another one, if it goes broody, in a nesting box out in the coop with the others and compare results. I sure hope I don't have chick killers! I guess you never know until you try.

By the way, I had placed eggs in an unpopular nesting box to try to get one to set on the eggs. Funny thing is, I guess all the other bantam hens are laying eggs in that nesting box with her now and I guess she is scooping them up under her because when I take a peak at her, I see no eggs. The bantams I/my son have were laying 4-5 bantam eggs per day. So, she must have 12-15 eggs up under her by now! She definitely looks content!

 

[Judy]

Yeah, I learned the hard way to mark (Sharpie works great) the eggs I have chosen to hatch. The broody will steal eggs from across the coop, and others will lay literally on top of her. So every day the broody gets picked up and the eggs checked, and new ones removed. I even draw a line all the way around the middle so I don't have to hunt for the new ones so hard.