Well yesterday I brought home 12 more chicks, 6 marans and 6 easter eggers. I really only wanted the marans for the color eggs but I thought:"I'm down to two easter eggers....why not?" I am going to raise half of them for a friend so I am going to keep only 6. I was hopeing that one of my three broodys would take a likeing to them but so far no luck, well that's not true... one showed interest but I didn't have the time to sit with them for hours to see if she was in a mothering or a murdering mood LOL. I'll see this weekend if they are not to big by then. These are the last chicks I buy from the feedstore, I love it when my broodys raise their little ones. I am thinking that I need a easter egger rooster and a maran rooster ( I have 5 RIR hens and RIR rooster) but that would mean that I need two more coops to keep them seperate if I wanted to breed them hmmmm....... my hubby would not be happy about that. So I wonder does anybody have any experience with introducing 1 week old chicks to broody hens and how many do you think she will adopt? I'll post some pics of the fuzzbutts later today or tomorrow.
The only way this has worked for me is putting them under the broody well after dark, and the chicks were from the feed store that day, maybe 3 or 4 days old. On the other hand, I had an odd thing happen a couple of months ago. A broody had been setting on air for a couple of weeks right next to my chicken wire pen inside my coop. In the pen were four (4) four week olds, who another broody refused when I brought them home from the feed store. One day she got off her nest and started pacing and clucking up and down the sides of the pen, looking for all the world like she had been separated from her chicks. Cautiously, I let her in the pen -- and sure enough, she started showing them how to eat, etc. Of course they were a bit confused, but they did gather around her when she clucked for them to do so. She mothered them, as much as they would allow, for 3 or 4 weeks. To this day she will go over and hang around near them when they group together. You just never know....
