Broody hens hatching babies together?

[WhisperingWinds]

Ok, I am new to letting hens do this the natural way ;-)
I have a hen who really was showing us she wanted to be a mama... so we picked out 6 good looking eggs and let her keep them.
We have a large cage (4x4) inside the coop, we moved her nest and gave her, her own food and water in there... and she seems to be happy as can be. We are at day 10, she lays on her eggs non stop, I have watched her turn them.
Question is...
I have another hen who is broody and I would like to let her have a few eggs, IF I move her nest box in with the other broody hen, will they play nice together or is that not a good move ??

Should I build new broody hen her own space ??

Thanks for advice and experience sharing

 

[Clucksworth]

I like letting chickens hatch chicks themselves, they always seem to end up with better hatch rates ;D

I wouldn't let broody hens share a pen/ nest box. They can get jealous and when the get up to eat and drink they can sometimes get quite aggravated and irritate another sitting hen (as broody hens have less tolerance to other chickens than a normal chicken does).

Previously I have had broodies in two separate runs next to each other, I tried to put two boxes in the same run but they kept bullying each other and when one hatched it's chicks the other hen killed some of her chicks. So to play it safe I would recommend that you just give your second broody a new house ( not shared with another broody).

Hope this helped

 

[WhisperingWinds]

Thanks for the advice, I will set up second broody in another pen.

 

[Carin]

This really depends on the hens. I had two hens that had chicks together and they never even thought about not being together.
At the moment I have two other hens and their hatch were also about two days from each other and they do not want to be near each other. They also will peck at any chick of the other hen that is to near. These are all Brahma hens -they all look alike.

Carin