the 6 egg were from my flock.The broody was in an enclosed pen by herself. Eggs are on day 20.it's just weird because she was protecting the chick that hatched yesterday but trying to kill one that hatched today while tearing apart an egg.We took all eggs and the chick from her. This was my 1st time with a broody.I don't think I will do it again. the blonde chick she was trying to kill is doing well . The other one is still in the egg.The veins in the membrane have stopped bleeding and i can see what i think is the yolk(yellow like pebbles) but its breathing. the last 2 eggs have no pip.....One egg is missing.I have no idea where it went...... so much for a stress free sunday lol
My hen went broody 6 weeks ago.I tried to break her but nothing worked so I gave her 2 eggs. On day 18 i noticed a blonde chick hatched but was dead and someone snacked on it the other egg had a broken air sack and that chick was dead in egg. I blamed it on the other chicken because she had to brood in nesting box. I moved her to an enclosure with 6 eggs. Yesterday a black chick hatched and she was caring for it, doing all the things she should do while sitting on other eggs. I went out today and found her trying to bury a living blonde chick in nesting material while eating another chick out of the egg. The poor chick in egg was not ready to hatch yet.We took all chicks and I put the 2 that she attacked in incubator(hatching quail at moment) The blonde one is very weak and just lays there but its getting better.The other one has over half the egg eating away.Theres blood all over but the chick is alive.
i'm just so confused. why would she be a good mom to the black one that hatched yesterday and try to kill the blonde one and eat the other out of the egg?
Things like this will happen when hens are allowed to sit too long before she gets some eggs to incubate, or if you keep trying to shove new eggs under her every day or two. In the first situation when the eggs first begin to hatch the hen has entered into a different mode of behavior and it is completely natural for a hen who has been setting for too long to eat dead or infertile eggs. She merely throws up her hands and says,
"enough is enough, I am so out of here, my bottom is sore already!"
Say that a hen was sitting for 3 weeks before you give her some eggs. Then when these eggs that she only been sitting on for 3 weeks (in human time) begin to hatch, the hens' biological clock tells her that she has been on the nest for 42 days, however the amount of human time that she has been sitting on
your eggs is only 21 days. What is a poor hen to do? She is not a machine but rather hens are flesh, feathers blood, and bone, there is only so much that we can expect her to accomplish. You must work within the hens' limitations, instead of expecting the hen to punch a time card, work for you, or even worse, expect her to read your mind. Hens often turn on odd or different looking chicks, The human concept of
"diversity" is not something that chickens embrace readily, and a hen who has bonded with a previously hatched chick can be expected to protect her "baby" by killing any radically different looking chicks that she finds
lurking in her baby's nest, and the fewer chicks that she has to compare with the first chick, the more likely she is to notice a different looking chick and take an active disliking to one or more of them.
