Broody Hen questions!

[Heat]

Hey BYC family!!!

I have a Blue Cochin who is broody and sitting on a nice clutch of eggs. She has been sitting on them for the past 2 weeks or so. Now my problem is she started with one and within the week she acquired 13 more! It seems like she was letting other chickens in to lay eggs during the day. for the first week she would actually be roosting in the morning and one of our Rhode Island Reds would be on the nest (as soon as they Red would get up our Cochin"Big Mama" would be on the nest within 1-2 minutes). However the past week she has been on the nest at all times it seems (I know she will get up once a day to do what she needs so I should expect to see her up and about) so I am unsure if more eggs are being laid under her (I was able to mark all of the eggs last Monday, and Tuesday (the last day i saw her up) it didn't look as though she had anymore eggs under her (it actually looked like one had gotten broke).

So I am thinking in about 1 - 1 1/2 weeks we should be getting chicks... but will all of the eggs hatch together if they were laid within a week period?

I am afraid of a few eggs hatching and there still being a few left ready to hatch within a few days. Will she abandon them if they are not quiet ready yet or will she sit on them for a few extra days just in case?

I am just trying to figure out if I should have an incubator set up or if she should know what to do?

Any information would be helpful as this is out first broody hen

 

[BairleaFarm]

If they are two weeks difference they wont hatch at the same time. If they are a few days apart they most likely will. My guess would be she was stealing eggs. I would have the bator ready as i think she will abandon the second set shes sitting on.

 

[darkmatter]

Yeah, that happens sometimes in my flock, with other hens laying an egg when the broody is off the nest. If this happens a lot, you can choose and mark the eggs you want her to hatch and discard the extras as they show up. Once I had a hen go broody with just one egg, I wasn't getting but one or two eggs a day from the others, so I set up the brooder and added an egg or two each day to the broody's nest. When they started hatching, I pulled the chick and place it in the brooder-------that hen set for 5 weeks and I got 25 chicks from her one or two a day for the duration. It was just an experiment to see how long she would set.