My Mottled Houdan (pictured left in my profile pic) has decided to go broody, which google says is not very common. I gave her 3 eggs to sit on and she’s only left the nest for around 10 mins yesterday, got some food and water and hopped back on. She’s been sitting for 4 days.
Unfortunately, she is the “strange” one in the flock being my only remaining crested breed and on the bottom of their pecking order; the rooster won’t even mount her. I’m not confident in her ability to keep any resulting babies safe, but want to let her try. No one picks on her, but she does a good job just staying out of everyone’s way.
As for the incubator, it’s having some humidity fluctuations, so I’m adding just a wet sponge to the water tray twice a day which is keeping it between 35-55%. Adding water spikes it up super high, so switched to the sponge. I have no idea if this is a real technique, but I’m rolling with it. I haven’t really found a way to stabilize it better than that. It shouldn’t be a problem once we get to lockdown because getting higher humidity seems easier to maintain on this machine.
Today is day 10. Candling this week and ditching the quitters, I suspect there’s at least 3 in there that aren’t doing anything.
Last year the few I hatched under a broody were all cockerels..
