Broody Hen Thread!

[Lady of McCamley]

Ber-rude-ie

Must be a difference in accents....

I pronounce it Brew-dee (emphasis on brew)

Lady of McCamley (in the Northwest)

 

[Lady of McCamley]

My Dixie had kicked out one of my BLRW to a corner ...and then broody-pooed on it. Needless to say when I found it it was cold. I washed it off and brought it in the house. It was too much of a mess and after the washing...it would have never made it so I did an egg-topsy. Not one bit of red speck on that egg....never developed. I sure hope these eggs are fertile! She's got the last BLRW egg from Kentucky under her, and then the 4 eggs DH picked up for me.

Feeling disappointed about losing a BLRW egg... Down to the last one. The one with the detached air cell never reattached BTW. Pitched that one too.

I know bummer....Likely she knew it wasn't going and had pitched it on purpose (I don't know how they know, but they know).

My KY eggs are down too...I checked 3 of the 4 incubator maybe's and pitched 3 of them...also did an egg topsy....none had developed in the slightest...but one showed veins and dark blob (the best my candling efforts show at day 10)...so I put it back in the incubator...I will recheck the eggs under the banty tonight and pull the one I think is a dud under her and replace with the one from the incubator...she'll do a whole lot better than I will as I keep forgetting to turn them.

I'm not overly impressed with shipped eggs either.
Lady of McCamley

 

[luvmypets]

I have a broody hatching duck eggs tommorow. Turns out i counted the days wrong...silly me!

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I know bummer....Likely she knew it wasn't going and had pitched it on purpose (I don't know how they know, but they know).

My KY eggs are down too...I checked 3 of the 4 incubator maybe's and pitched 3 of them...also did an egg topsy....none had developed in the slightest...but one showed veins and dark blob (the best my candling efforts show at day 10)...so I put it back in the incubator...I will recheck the eggs under the banty tonight and pull the one I think is a dud under her and replace with the one from the incubator...she'll do a whole lot better than I will as I keep forgetting to turn them.

I'm not overly impressed with shipped eggs either.
Lady of McCamley

I'm thinking she did. And it was playing in my head that she knew this one "wouldn't do" and I trusted that it was cold and kicked out for a reason. I'm trusting her a lot in this whole thing. If this other shipped egg ends up being a dud I might talk to the lady...if she responds to an ebay message and see what she thinks...although I don't think I will accept replacements that are shipped. There are of course shipment and incubation disclaimers with the sale. But my own eggs after I pick them in...you can see a red fertile spot when we're frying them up. IDK...There is a breeder that lives a little more than 3 hours west of here. (6 hours round trip) We'll see how Dixie does with the remaining eggs, what I get for hens, what I have for coop space....etc. I'm sure she'll brood for me again, too...

 

[mrchicks]

I'm going to risk life and limb and try to candle Judy the ferocious broody's eggs tomorrow. I'll put mealworms outside before venturing in.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I'm going to risk life and limb and try to candle Judy the ferocious broody's eggs tomorrow. I'll put mealworms outside before venturing in.

Good luck

Large bowl of treats should do the trick.
Lady of McCamley

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I'm thinking she did. And it was playing in my head that she knew this one "wouldn't do" and I trusted that it was cold and kicked out for a reason. I'm trusting her a lot in this whole thing. If this other shipped egg ends up being a dud I might talk to the lady...if she responds to an ebay message and see what she thinks...although I don't think I will accept replacements that are shipped. There are of course shipment and incubation disclaimers with the sale. But my own eggs after I pick them in...you can see a red fertile spot when we're frying them up. IDK...There is a breeder that lives a little more than 3 hours west of here. (6 hours round trip) We'll see how Dixie does with the remaining eggs, what I get for hens, what I have for coop space....etc. I'm sure she'll brood for me again, too...

Yeah...it's the luck of the draw with shipped eggs...I've gone from 16 to 10 worthy of setting to probably the last 4 or 5 that look to have development. Not even 50% if you consider the original 16 (although I only paid for 12). EDITED TO ADD: I just candled my last time tonight at day 10 ...and it looks like I've got 6 developing....yay...11 more days to go.

BTW...the fertile spot on an egg is not a red blood spot...it is a white bullseye. Eggs can have blood specks, but that is not the fertile blastodisk. See photo below in link.
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/01/facts-and-myths-about-fertile-eggs.html

Lady of McCamley

 

[mopsee2000]

I have 8 hens. One hen is broody for a while now. The other hens lay eggs in her nest and she sits on them. No other hen sits on the eggs. The first two eggs hatched. My first chicks. One is obviously hers. The other is not. It's obvious. Silver phoenix hen and the kids are a silver phoenix and a Plymouth rock. The rock is black with a yellow spot on its head. My two roosters are Rhode island red and silver phoenix. Here is my first question; she has raised the chicks so far, they are two weeks old. The rock hen pays no attention to the chicks. The phoenix does not allow the other hens near them. She is obviously not the mother. Is it common for one broody hen to adopt the other eggs and raise the chicks as her own? The other hens lay eggs that she is sitting on right now. I know this is what has happened as she lays white eggs and none of the eggs she sits on are white. They are 14 brown and 3 blue. Now for my next question which will come after a sad story and let me remind everyone, that I am new at this. I collected the eggs from the other part of my coops, that I eat everyday. I got one from under the broody hen. I placed the egg in a glass of ice water as you tube said if it shook, there was a chick in there. But nothing. It was perfectly still. I waited about 5 minutes. The I was going to make an omelet. I hatched the first eggs into a bowl. Then I got the second egg out of the glass of ice water and cracked it. I was mortified and I still have not recovered. A baby chick came out. It was fully formed. It had a red pocket that I assumed was its nutrition in the egg. The phoenix is still laying on the other 17 and I have not touched any more. Nothing new has hatched but here is the time table. I took all the eggs from under her leaving two. The two I left hatched and those are the babies I first wrote about. The two eggs left were one brown and one white. That was April 25. Over the course of the next 5 days, she had 18 eggs under her including some that were layed before the two I left hatched.. Since May 1, no new eggs have been added. When she leaves in the morning, she buries the eggs. When she returns she unburies and sits on the eggs. If she leaves again, she buries again. Here's the question. I hatched the egg with a chick in it two days ago. I have vowed to never touch her eggs again. But if any of the eggs are not fertilized, will they rot and stink and ruin the others? What should I do? And finally, possible mothers; 3 barred plymouth rock, 1 silver phoenix, 1 welsumer, 3 Easter eggers. I assume the black chick is a plymouth rock/ rhode island mix and the other is straight silver phoenix. The only two possible fathers are 1 silver phoenix and 1 red. Can I assume this lineage by looking.

 

[fisherlady]

I have 8 hens. One hen is broody for a while now. The other hens lay eggs in her nest and she sits on them. No other hen sits on the eggs. The first two eggs hatched. My first chicks. One is obviously hers. The other is not. It's obvious. Silver phoenix hen and the kids are a silver phoenix and a Plymouth rock. The rock is black with a yellow spot on its head. My two roosters are Rhode island red and silver phoenix. Here is my first question; she has raised the chicks so far, they are two weeks old. The rock hen pays no attention to the chicks. The phoenix does not allow the other hens near them. She is obviously not the mother. Is it common for one broody hen to adopt the other eggs and raise the chicks as her own? The other hens lay eggs that she is sitting on right now. I know this is what has happened as she lays white eggs and none of the eggs she sits on are white. They are 14 brown and 3 blue. Now for my next question which will come after a sad story and let me remind everyone, that I am new at this. I collected the eggs from the other part of my coops, that I eat everyday. I got one from under the broody hen. I placed the egg in a glass of ice water as you tube said if it shook, there was a chick in there. But nothing. It was perfectly still. I waited about 5 minutes. The I was going to make an omelet. I hatched the first eggs into a bowl. Then I got the second egg out of the glass of ice water and cracked it. I was mortified and I still have not recovered. A baby chick came out. It was fully formed. It had a red pocket that I assumed was its nutrition in the egg. The phoenix is still laying on the other 17 and I have not touched any more. Nothing new has hatched but here is the time table. I took all the eggs from under her leaving two. The two I left hatched and those are the babies I first wrote about. The two eggs left were one brown and one white. That was April 25. Over the course of the next 5 days, she had 18 eggs under her including some that were layed before the two I left hatched.. Since May 1, no new eggs have been added. When she leaves in the morning, she buries the eggs. When she returns she unburies and sits on the eggs. If she leaves again, she buries again. Here's the question. I hatched the egg with a chick in it two days ago. I have vowed to never touch her eggs again. But if any of the eggs are not fertilized, will they rot and stink and ruin the others? What should I do? And finally, possible mothers; 3 barred plymouth rock, 1 silver phoenix, 1 welsumer, 3 Easter eggers. I assume the black chick is a plymouth rock/ rhode island mix and the other is straight silver phoenix. The only two possible fathers are 1 silver phoenix and 1 red. Can I assume this lineage by looking.

congrats on the 2 chicks!

I understand you are new to the broody hens, so will try to cover a few basics for you...
A broody hen means a hen whose 'mama' hormones have been switched on for any number of reasons... sometimes it is weather, or season, or hearing baby chicks, or finding a handful of eggs in a nest that happen to push on her belly or chest a certain way when she is in the nest to lay her own egg for the day.... so basically, a hen can go hormonal for a lot of reasons but bottom line is that we can't force them to be broody, only mother nature gets to do that...

A chicken egg takes approximately 21 days to develop from the first day heat is applied, either via incubator or broody hen. Typically when a hen starts getting a broody urge she will begin gathering eggs for her clutch. Sometimes it is as simple as waiting for other flockmates to lay in a favored nest which can give her a whole clutch of 8 or 10 eggs in a single day, sometimes she can move eggs from other nests to her chosen spot and sometimes she moves out of the nest several times to allow other hens to lay in her nest till she thinks she has enough. Then she starts the actual 'setting' part of the process.

Once the hen starts to set the 21 day count starts... but so can problems if other hens are still able to get into her nest to lay extra eggs. When this happens it causes a problem called 'staggered hatching'... basically, the original eggs are due to hatch on day 21, all eggs added to the nest later in the process will each start their own 21 day count down. This can be a major problem if the additional eggs are added over a long period of time because the hen's instinct is to continue setting as long as there are eggs she thinks will hatch. Some hens are able to overcome this instinct when they realize they have new hatched chicks to care for, others don't... and those hens then are trying to care for new hatched chicks and still worry about late eggs. This is a problem.

New hatched chicks can wait up to 48-72 hours to go get food and water, after that they should be out and about with the mama hen learning how to be good little chickens. If mama is trying to continue hatching eggs then the chicks will miss out... if mama is out taking care of the new ones then the remaining late eggs are probably getting too cool and eventually they will die.

So there is little you can do about what is already happened with your hen and nest other than remove any unhatched eggs to an incubator to see if they may eventually hatch. This will allow the hen to get up and care for her 2 chicks.

In the future... if you have a broody in a community environment then you need to mark her original eggs (whatever eggs you want her to hatch) and remove any extra eggs other hens lay daily! If need be you might have to create a chicken wire door to block her nest off from other hens and you can let her out once or twice a day to eat and stretch and poo... but if you do block her off you must without fail take her out, and you must also make sure she always has access to food and water.

I can't answer you about how to identify the parentage of the chicks, other than suggest you use the search function above to find pictures of chicks of the breeds you have and see which yours resemble.

Also, if you go to the learning center tab and check there you will find a number of articles on broody hens... take the time to read through them, there is a wealth of information in them to help you better understand the process.

 

[mopsee2000]

Thank you for your response.