Broody behavior post-hatch, nature vs nurture

[Mrs. K]

Well, I set three under her tonight! They just disappeared under the feathers. Her cluck changed. Should be good tomorrow.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well, I set three under her tonight! They just disappeared under the feathers. Her cluck changed. Should be good tomorrow.

Don't think I've read someone mention about the cluck changing on chick hatch. I wasn't watching for that with my good broody last year. If that's an indicator of chick acceptance that's good to know!

I've fired up my incubator for the 24h warm up it's supposed to have (or I think it's supposed to have...I lost the instructions lol). I'll start some eggs in there so they're warm when they go under my broody. I will need to move her and will give her the real eggs after that. She's still being such a sweety. Can't let her hatch in the main coop unfortunately; too many snakes outside that can fit through 1/2in HWC if they are motivated enough and also two hens I don't trust around brand new chicks. It looks like I've got 100% fertility from the bullseye test when I cook, but this will be my third attempt trying to hatch eggs from the particular bird I've been saving them from...too many variables before to know why the first two attempts failed, but if it's duds again it's a good time of year for it to have day-olds as a backup.

 

[Mrs. K]

Why would you pre warm the eggs?

 

[DonyaQuick]

Why would you pre warm the eggs?

Part paranoia, part timing. If I could just put the eggs under her right now I'd do that. However, I don't want to move her along with developing eggs, and I might not be able to move my broody to her safe-to-hatch-in location right away. I don't want to keep her broody longer than necessary, so I figure I can get the eggs started for a few days in the incubator while I get my broody setup back together. I don't want to give her real eggs until I've moved her and she's settled to avoid mishaps, and similarly I don't want her to go "whoa what's that cold thing" and have any strange reactions when I do the fake-to-real egg switch.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Three weeks later and broody Squishy is so far being a great mama with her newly hatched chicks. She is very attentive to them.

I thought it would be worth recording some clear similarities I saw with her and my previous good broody, and differences from the bad one.

• Alertness - this girl and my previous good broody remained pretty alert the whole time. They would track my hand as I reached around them, groomed themselves, etc. My bad broody often broody tranced to the point of being pretty unresponsive and just staring straight ahead unless I removed her from the nest for a dust bath.
• Tone when talking to the eggs - my two good broody ladies made a wide range of tones to their eggs: various clucks, purring, etc. My bad broody was very quiet and mostly just made the default broody cluck and the "food here" noise towards hatch time which was pretty weird in retrospect (and all she wanted to do was feed them various things after hatch; she loved feeding them but freaked out if they tried to go under her).
• Eating well - this broody in particular ate like a champ through the process; haven't weighed her but I'll bet she didn't really lose much if any weight. My other good broody also did pretty well but did lose a little weight. My bad broody lost a lot of weight.