broody hen

[sherrihargrove]

Im so excited one of my Ameraucana hen has gone broody, I gave her 3 eggs and today i found 6 under her so I moved her box and all to a pen with food water and hay to potty on. Most of my girls love that box so I removed it cause I don't want eggs hatching for a week.I candled the eggs tonight and all seem all of them seem to be progressing. I hope she will set long enough to hatch all 6 of them.

 

[NathanandJulie]

I am doing the same thing, I have two Broody hens and they have been laying on 8 eggs for about 12 days so far. I candle them almost everyday just to make sure the babies are still alive. So far it seems that they are all growing just fine. I hope they all hatch and are normal. I keep reading stuff on here about perfect humidity and temperature, however I am pretty sure chickens have been hatching there own eggs for a 1,000 years or so and they know what they are doing. Good luck with your babies.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Im so excited one of my Ameraucana hen has gone broody, I gave her 3 eggs and today i found 6 under her so I moved her box and all to a pen with food water and hay to potty on. Most of my girls love that box so I removed it cause I don't want eggs hatching for a week.I candled the eggs tonight and all seem all of them seem to be progressing. I hope she will set long enough to hatch all 6 of them.

I am doing the same thing, I have two Broody hens and they have been laying on 8 eggs for about 12 days so far. I candle them almost everyday just to make sure the babies are still alive. So far it seems that they are all growing just fine. I hope they all hatch and are normal. I keep reading stuff on here about perfect humidity and temperature, however I am pretty sure chickens have been hatching there own eggs for a 1,000 years or so and they know what they are doing. Good luck with your babies.

Good luck with broody hatching...it truly is wonderful to see momma at work.

You are correct...momma takes care of all the humidity and warmth for the eggs...and will continue to do so for the chicks when they hatch. Don't be surprised if she has the chicks out sratching in the dirt by day 3 or 4, and they run around without heat lamps and are just fine....they have wonderful built in down coats and momma for a warm up if it gets nippy.

Do be sure all the eggs are set at the same time otherwise you will have a staggered hatch which is a bad thing....the hen will either stay with the eggs and ignore the hatched chicks or abandon the developing eggs when the first chicks hatch.

While it is fun to candle, I prefer not to overhandle the eggs. You risk interrupting the flora on the shell with constant handling and interrupting the temperature controls. If you do decide to candle, try to do it when the hen is on a potty break.

Don't worry that the hen will appear to be sitting 24/7...she has to sit most of the time on the eggs and will get up only once a day to eat/drink/poo. She will also lose weight and her comb will look floppy from the lack of production hormones in her body. That is all normal.

You can help boost her system by supplying chick start (higher protein) as feed now, and placing Chick Saver vitamins/electrolytes in her water as "gatorade" for the endurance race she has entered.

You are very wise to separate her out so that the others can't disturb her (and tromp developing eggs) and so momma doesn't snatch more eggs to add to the clutch producing staggering and risking older eggs getting shuffled out.

Good luck and happy hatching.
LofMc