I put some eggs under my broody last night. Some were older than 3 days old, so today I got 2 fresh eggs and switched them out with the older ones. Of course, out of curiosity, I brought the 2 I had switched out in and cracked them open. Of course they looked like a normal yolk BUT where the white dot or disc would be kind of opened up and the yolk spilled out. Does this mean they were starting to develop? I have looked up the pictures, but haven't found any that are that early! Now the guilt is kicking in and I wonder if I ruined them for no reason just because they were older than the fresh ones
Don't beat yourself up over it! They don't really start to develop until they've been incubated 24 hours. I had to trash some eggs that were incubated about 3 days because my broody switched nests and allowed the first eggs to freeze. I opted not to open them and see if there was any development. I put my girl in a seperate pen with ONE nest box and gave her more eggs, she's been doing fine since. I think the incubation "rules" have a lot of wiggle room. I've hatched eggs that have set out for 2 weeks at room temp, I've hatched refridgerated eggs, I've hatched dirty eggs and eggs that have been washed. I still had good hatch rates. I'm one of those "lets try this and see how it goes" sort of person. The 3-day old eggs would probably have developed fine, but just go from here and don't look back.
Thank You so much! My first thought was to leave them all under her, but then I noticed that with 4, some were peaking out from under her, so I thought 6 would be too many. I was really hoping that nothing had happened yet..that would have been sad!
I'm with you. My broodies are all Silkies, so they're small and I also worry about them covering all their eggs in this cold. I've read they can handle up to 6 standard-size eggs, but this time of year, I give them no more than 4. I think I had another girl go broody in the last 2 days and I'm about to give her some mutt eggs. All my chickens are purebred, but all mixed together in 2 big pens, so all the eggs are mutts. I'll be glad when the nice weather comes and I can buy some hatching eggs instead of hatching mutts left and right! What breed is your broody and what is she sitting on?
I am the same way! All of mine are pure bred except the EE's of course because they are a mix anyway. She is a Delaware Blue hen and is sitting on blue hen eggs, but I am not sure how many times the cochin has bred the Delaware Blues. So i might have all pures or Blue hen x partridge cochin! Either way they will be cuties! I am going to be separating the Delaware Blue Hens from the rest of the flock so that i can have purebreds only when it comes to their eggies!
