Do I have a bad hen?

[rssnbabybear]

Te hen and babies did well through the night. They all settle in and slept. This morning they were still calm in the nest box. I was gone all day and this afternoon o came home and they were all in the same place. I'm concerned that she never brought them out of there. She got very bossy when I tried to look underneath her, so I'm sure she's taken them for her own. But why has she not left the nest box?

 

[rssnbabybear]

I

I do it during the daytime but like I said I am not trying to put poults under a hen.  I am giving the hen the opportunity to claim the poults if she wants them.  I stay and watch the process.  It doesn't take very long to see if the hen will round up the poults and take charge of them.  Forty degree temperatures will kill 10 day old poults that don't have a heat source and it really won't take that long for them to be severely chilled.

thought about the cold temps after I posted. I checked on them very frequently for the first hour until the hen settled down enough to go to sleep and then I got up super early to check them again. I figured that as long as she was asleep they would be fine. And they were.