Hi! It's that time of year again, and I have 2 broody hens sitting on about a dozen of our own chicken eggs (there's a mixture of green eggs from our crossed blue Easter Egger hen/Splash Cochin rooster and a mixture of blue eggs from our black Ameraucana hen/Splash Cochin rooster...Should be a colorful bunch of chicks when they hatch!
) One broody hen, Pumpkin, is a buff Bantam Cochin. She had a rough start in the beginning; she started out with a bunch of eggs...Too many to fit under her, actually!
So I tossed out any that I knew weren't any good and made her more comfortable. Then, on a morning when our BO hen laid an egg before anyone went out to collect it, Pumpkin abandoned her eggs (probably out of confusion because the nest boxes with her eggs and the just-laid egg are right next to each other) and she started sitting on the just-laid egg!
Luckily I caught her in time so her eggs weren't too cool for too long. She did this a couple times until we made sure to collect the just-laid eggs in the morning before she got confused with them and her real eggs.
Our 2nd broody, Oreo, who is an Ameraucana/Splash Cochin cross from our own chickens, just recently also went broody in the nest box beside Pumpkin's nest box. But is it possible for a hen at her age to go broody??? She's less than a year old and starting laying around last January. She will be a year old on July 20th, 2010.
I thought that hens are usually a little older, like at least a year, before they go broody?
Well anyways, all of the eggs under each broody is at a different stage. I decided to split up the eggs between the two; I put all of the later-developed ones under Pumpkin, since she went broody first, and all the earlier-developers under Oreo. So Oreo has most of the eggs, being the larger of the two, so Pumpkin doesn't have to try to sit on more eggs than she can fit under her.
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Since both broody hens went unexpectedly broody, I never had a chance to mark which days the eggs were laid so I have no idea how old each one is. Although after candling, a few look pretty close to hatching!
Maybe they will even hatch this week! These older eggs are all under Pumpkin. If they hatch and she abandons the earlier ones, I'm going to move those ones under Oreo with the rest. Then when Oreo hatches out hers, if there are any earlier-developers that haven't hatched, hopefully I'm here to see them hatch and I can start up the incubator to put the abandoned eggs in.
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One concern that I have is about humidity. I'm not worried about temperature..It's rather cool here today (in the 40's) but I've heard that some people on here have had their broody hens hatch eggs in the middle of winter and the chicks did fine. So I know that the chicks will be nice and warm under their mother hen.
But humidity, on the other hand, is what I'm worried about. Lately it has been very rainy and wet and I know that must mean that humidity is very high outside and in the chicken coops. Which is a danger to the soon-to-hatch eggs because there was too-high humidity problems last year while Pumpkin was broody (none of the eggs made it.
) and I'm worried the same thing will happen again. Is there anything I can do to make sure the high humidity doesn't affect the eggs under the broody hens?
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Thanks for reading and hopefully we get some new chicks soon! These will be the first broody-hatched eggs this year.
-77horses
Our 2nd broody, Oreo, who is an Ameraucana/Splash Cochin cross from our own chickens, just recently also went broody in the nest box beside Pumpkin's nest box. But is it possible for a hen at her age to go broody??? She's less than a year old and starting laying around last January. She will be a year old on July 20th, 2010.
Well anyways, all of the eggs under each broody is at a different stage. I decided to split up the eggs between the two; I put all of the later-developed ones under Pumpkin, since she went broody first, and all the earlier-developers under Oreo. So Oreo has most of the eggs, being the larger of the two, so Pumpkin doesn't have to try to sit on more eggs than she can fit under her.
___________________________________________________________________
Since both broody hens went unexpectedly broody, I never had a chance to mark which days the eggs were laid so I have no idea how old each one is. Although after candling, a few look pretty close to hatching!
___________________________________________________________________
One concern that I have is about humidity. I'm not worried about temperature..It's rather cool here today (in the 40's) but I've heard that some people on here have had their broody hens hatch eggs in the middle of winter and the chicks did fine. So I know that the chicks will be nice and warm under their mother hen.
___________________________________________________________________
Thanks for reading and hopefully we get some new chicks soon! These will be the first broody-hatched eggs this year.
-77horses
