Broody Hen... Again.

[Ebony Rose]

So, I caught my broody hen taking care of herself today, eating, drinking and a quick dustbath so... I went to check on her clutch.

Would you believe she was sitting on 26 eggs!? I brought them all in to the house, candled them, pulled out and turned on my incubator. I marked & returned the seven most developed eggs to her nest and kept the other nineteen in the incubator. Apparently her 'sisters' have been adding to the nest, and she's just been tucking them under herself. (tsk tsk tsk)

My plan will be to return the incubated eggs to her once they pip for as long as she's accepting them, and raise the balance without her further assistance.

Going to have a whole lot of chickens!

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

I love seeing how many eggs everyone's broody hens end up sitting on, absolutely brilliant lol! What type of hen is she?

 

[-Shade-]

No kidding! What I tried with a broody hen that I gave eggs to was pinning a small light cloth over the nesting box entrance. In my experience, it led to a lost egg, but my girls are pretty stubborn. You might have a better result than me.

 

[Ebony Rose]

She's what they call a 'backyard' or 'patio' chicken. A good solid mix of production red, easter egger (with americana roots), and game bird/fighting chickens, and the odd leghorn type thrown in for good measure.
I live in Panama, so fighting birds are legal here... but I don't raise mine for that purpose, I raise my flock for meat, eggs and the pleasure of it.
She's larger than her gamebird ancestors, but considerably smaller than her 'full sized' ancestors... a nice happy medium.
She lays medium sized eggs, when she lays... I usually only get one or two eggs out of her before she decides that brooding hurts less (and she broods again).
I love the confidence and semi-self-reliance that the game birds add to the mix, and they pay close attention to their environment; daytime predators never go unnoticed and nighttime predators cannot get in to their coop.