Busted broody egg, other eggs sticky

[Faith Hope]

I have a broody silkie, and this is our first broody. She has been sitting on the eggs for 11 days now. I orignally put 8 eggs under her. Twice now, I have found one of the eggs busted and nothing left but part of the shell. The first time I had not yet isolated her, so I assumed one of the other birds had messed with her nest. No big deal. We have since isolated her.

This morning I let her out for her morning poop. I noticed one of the eggs was missing except for a few pieces of shell. My question is this: the remaining eggs are sticky now; will this hurt the remaining eggs? What shoud I do?

Thanks.

 

[PamB]

I wouldn't think that would hurt the remaining eggs. Is your broody eating the eggs?? Hopefully, someone that has some experience with this will be able to help you out.

 

[Faith Hope]

I don't know if she is eating them. I don't see any of the inside of the egg, so I guess I have to assume she must have????

I am mostly concerned that the eggs will be damaged. I don't know whether I should clean them, leave them alone, or start over.

Has anyone had this happen? What did you do?

 

[Faith Hope]

Okay. I went out tonight to check on my chickens. We decided to candle the eggs again to see if they were still developing. Good news is that they seem to be moving and developing. Bad news is that one of the eggs broke somehow and all of the yolk came out and was all over the eggs and the hen's belly. It was very sticky and messy, so we decided to clean the eggs off and the hen -- what a mess. We actually brought her and the eggs in the house and set the eggs near our woodstove while we cleaned the silkie off in the bathtub! Then we dried her with the hairdryer and set her on her eggs in a box by the woodstove until she was dry. Amazingly, she is now back outside settled back in her nest with her eggs. I was really worried that she might decide to give up after that mess!

Does anyone know if the eggs have any chance of survival? When I did candle I saw movement in some and all seemed to have grown since we last candled on day 7. (We are now on day 11.)

I guess we will give it a few more days and then candle again. If they are not developing should I replace them? Can she start over after being on eggs for 2 weeks?

Thanks.

 

[Mama2B&D&...Chickens]

I don't know about the entire situation...shoot, i'm on our 1st hatch too

BUT, just wanted to say that one of our broodys egg cracked too and i didnt know what to do with it...we were at about day 14 though and she...WELP...ate it. Feathers and all...i think its chicken nature for her them to do that if one cracks accidentally...more protein to actually help her get through the sit? But, that's just what I've heard...I didn't clean anything off our eggs but they weren't totally gooped up? Just a tad of something here and there

 

[Faith Hope]

Our broody seems fine this morning. She is clean and the 5 remaining eggs are warm. She got up as usual and wanted to eat as soon as I came out this morning and then went right back to her nest. We will candle the eggs in a few days to see if there is life in them.

I think our broody ate one of the eggs that was bad also. But the last one just had the goop seeping out a hole. I actually cracked it open the rest of the way and saw the formed chick -- I would guess it died at day 8 or 9 from looking at pictures of those stages. I even took a picture of it -- gross but I wanted to compare it to pictures online to see when it had died.

I guess we will wait and see.

 

[Faith Hope]

Incase anyone has this kind of question later, I thought I would update. I candled the remaining 5 eggs on day 14. They all seemed to be growing still. A few days later I noticed that one of the eggs was much lighter than the others. This morning, day 21, that egg had disappeared all but a piece of the shell. We also heard peeping!

We just went out, and we have our first chick! I will let you know how many others hatch, but apparently chicks can still hatch after being thoroughly cleaned!

 

[pdsavage]

Congradulations,even with all the proublems some made it to the finish line.

 

[mychookschick]

Hey... I just wanted to say that if you didn't notice her getting out of the boxes atleast once daily then she probably ate the other eggs. I have heard that some chickens will eat one egg "for the good of the others" because they don't realize that they can get up or they are too stubborn to... Good luck with the rest of the chicks!

 

[Faith Hope]

I thought I would add some pictures of the hen and her chicks. Three have hatched so far.

There is one more egg, and it has been 23 days as of this evening. I don't know if it will hatch. How long shoud I wait?