Broody hen found dead by 2 1/2 week old nest...

[jude2000]

Hello everyone, my name is Jude and I'm new here... I have raised chickens for about 10 years now and always let my buffs go broody and hatch out the new generation. Presently, I have a really sweet Cuckoo Maran rooster and Buff hens. This AM my son, while doing barn chores found a broody hen that had been setting on a bunch of eggs dead next to the nest with a HUGE black snake eating one of her eggs. This was in our big barn, away from the coop where I let my hens raise their little ones until they are of a size to join the flock at the coop. Poor old girl...I don't know if she died from a heart attack or if the snake killed her to get to the eggs. But the thing is...she had been setting on the eggs for probably 2 to two and a half weeks. This Spring everyone went broody at once and I have four differant families of almost half grown chicks running around with their mommas.

Can I hatch these chicks out myself by keeping them in a heat and moisture controlled environment since they are so close to hatching naturally? Would I have to do the whole incubator thing, or could I do something fairly minimal with a heat light and pan of water? I would love to give these poor little motherless eggs a fighting chance if I can. Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Jude

 

[CantSkipThis1]

There was a post on here where a lady found her duck dead and she had been sitting on eggs. She made a incubator out of a fish tank, a light and a water pan(something like that). At the end of the post she did end up hatching the eggs. You might want to search for itm and read what she did. Goodluck!

 

[chickeepoo]

I finished up duck eggs in a borrowed incubator for 2 weeks- it went to temp pretty quickly and didn't have too much fluctuation problems, just me trying to get the humidity higher for duck egg needs. It sounds like the eggs' chances are good- can you borrow an incubator if you don't have one? I don't know how chicken eggs with several days left to go do in the aquarium set-up… good luck. There should be someone with lots of experience who can chime in here with advice- that's how I made it through our egg rescue/hatch.

 

[Mandalina]

I hope you can hatch them out, sorry for the loss of your hen!

 

[Kedreeva]

If you can keep them someplace with 99-100 degree temps and 60% humidity (which is really hard to do without an enclosed space) then the eggs can probably be hatched out just fine. Got a styrofoam cooler or a tupperware bin or even an old aquarium you can make your own incubator in a pinch. A pan of water with a clean sponge in it should do for humidity (if you can close the top or set something on top) and a non-energy saving light bulb can probably be used for heat. If you perhaps have a heating pad, if you could raise the eggs off the floor you could probably use that if you had nothing else.

It's basically just got to be consistent and moist, if you can get those two things you will probably do fine. Best of luck!