busted eggs under momma hen

We left our broody hen in the nest and we ended up losing 2 chicks over it.

It took us a little while to figure it out, but she was getting off the nest. She would eat, drink and do her business quickly and get back on. But I'm pretty sure at least one of the other hens got on the nest when she was off because twice we found an extra egg in the nest and one of the eggs she was sitting on got broken early on.

We tried to move her and the eggs on day 20, but she would have no part of it. It was like she didn't recognize her eggs were still with her. She raised such a ruckus, my husband let her out. She went back to the nest, and when she saw the eggs were gone, she kept pacing back and forth in front of the nest. My husband relented and put the eggs back in the nest.

We have a galvanized metal nest box. It's 2 rows of 5 and we had it mounted so the botton was about 3 feet off the floor. She was using a nest in the top row, so she was quite a ways up. Once the chicks started to hatch, we took the nest boxes off the wall and put it on the floor so that if any chicks jumped out, it wouldn't be so far. (The other hens weren't happy about that). Late in the second day of hatching, the chicks jumped out and our hen abandoned the remaining eggs. We came home to find 2 cold, dead recently hatched chicks and the remaining eggs were cold. We set her up in a brood box then (our dog cage), but it took several hours before she settled in. She hatched one more chick from the remaining eggs, but once the already hatched chicks became active, it was harder to get her to continue to sit on the remaining eggs.

If she ever goes broody again, we will move her and see if she remains broody, before we put any fertilized eggs under her.

I hope this helps and you have better success with your chicks.
 
thanks! oh, what if i pen her up in there where she is at for a while. so the babies cant fall out?! yikes!
 

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