Forever Broody ~ Might actually hatch one finally!

[BantyHugger]

So sometime back in the middle april my little D'uccle hen started setting. after about 30 days she realized all her eggs were not going to hatch and she gave up. Well not 2 days after that one of my Barred rocks took over her nest site. She has been setting on numerous eggs (about 20 i think) for a while now. We had been taking eggs from her but she just collects new ones so we decided to just leave her with the 20 she thinks she *needs*. Well last night we candled and I am happy to say she has at least 1 developing chick. It has a definite head/eye so i think its about 14 days old? Hopefully she will just hatch this one and then quit. I think the chick will be a EE/d'uccle cross but it could be leghorn/d'uccle cross.

I also have a Buff Orpington who has been setting about 9 days now. I can't tell if she has any developing but we plan to slip her some RIR chicks from our bator just in case.

I wish my rooster could fertilze the hens better. We have 2 banty hens and the rest are standards. He is a banty and is apparently too short to actually fertialize most of the hens. I guess size does matter.

 

[BantyHugger]

Here is my Barred rock setting:

 

[The Wolf Queen]

I have almost the same problem . I have 2 banties roos and both cannot get the job done on my standard brahma hen. So im waiting for one of my EE chicks to go roo so I can keep and use him for breeding my designer chicks.

 

[77horses]

we also have a similar problem with our Splash Cochin rooster...he's a standard, not a bantam, but he's still pretty young and inexperienced. our RIR rooster, on the other hand, does pretty well with fertilizing the eggs. But our broody hen is sitting on a bunch of eggs(it's day 20-21 now!) and there were 10+ of them at first, now only 4 are planned to hatch...it was 5, but one egg got stepped on and there was a chick inside.

So 4/10 or more eggs have lively chicks in them.

Not very good, but it's the broody hen's first try. It's not really her fault...our Cochin rooster needs to practice more!

 

[BantyHugger]

Well the one chick failed to hatch. We candled and there was zero movement.

Absolutely none of the other eggs are fertile. I don't know if this hen is strong enough to make it threw 21 more days if i were to give her some fertile eggs now. I might have to break down and buy her a chick so she will stop this nonsense and consider her health!
The BO seems to be doing alright, she has a couple banty eggs under her so I'm sure she'll hatch something.