Broody got off eggs for 5 hours! Update and pics page 2

[walkswithdog]

Hang in there. And yes you can smell a bad egg through the shell. Momma will teach them everything else. Good stop that... LOL. If she does decide she is finished and leaves with her crew - sorry I don't remember your set up. Then you'll have to take them and do it yourself. Not until then. If you have her crated etc. and she's peaceful on them - let em ride.

 

[Biddieacres]

She is peaceful and enclosed so I'm gonna Let em ride!

I like that!

 

[Pupsnpullets]

And if there's a rotten egg that explodes, yes, there will be a most obnoxious smell but remember, it's only gas and it will disapate very quickly. I wish the obnoxious smells my dog finds to roll in would disperse as quickly as that of a rotten egg

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Tomorrow the hen will want to get off the nest to take her chicks for their first outing, to get food & water. She's also going to want to relieve herself of a great big poop. She might want to take the kids back to the nest afterwards, but in my experience any remaining eggs do not hatch under the hen. Even if there are chicks inside and she continues to set on them.

So perhaps you could find her tomorrow when she & the chicks have gone out. Weren't you going to move her nest to a ground-level location anyway? She will want to be in the dirt with them, teaching them to scratch & peck and dust-bathe. She'll be more oriented to the chicks and less to the nest-site now.

It's up to you what you want to do with any remaining eggs. You could just bury them without ever peeking inside, or you could candle them to see if they're clear or if they seem to be full of chick. Even then, it's up to you if you just want to bury them all anyway, sometimes chicks develop almost completely and then fail to hatch. Or if you want to do the extra work, you could try to incubate them *just in case* you could get them to hatch.

You & your hen did a good job even if all the eggs don't hatch. There are always many many many things that can go wrong during a set, every hatched chick represents a miracle or more. You hatched out some chicks and hatched out a lot of learning from experience too, that is helping this whole community too.

 

[Jolyn]

How adorable!!! Congratulations on the new little babes!!

 

[Biddieacres]

Nature is taking its course and on day 23........BABY #3!!!! Couldn't be happier. Sunny, great information about chicks developing then just fail to hatch. I think by day 25 I will candle like you said but bury them after that. This has been such a learning experience.

The 3rd one wouldn't come out for a pic. She's hiding under Mom. Had to post another pic.

EDITED TO SAY: Mother hen abandoned the last two eggs and even kicked one out of her nest. I candled and did not see anything, so I cracked them open and a thin yellow liquid ran out. They were duds.

See the legs?