Hatch

[akamodo]

Hi i was directed here by a member so hopefully i can get the info i need so what happened was i got a cochin what was broody and put guine fowl eggs under her and this morning peep peeep ther is a lone newly hatched chicken which we dont know who layed or more importantly when so will the cochin stay with the guinea eggs or abandon them to look after new chick ? Guineas are due to hatch in next 3 days also i have free ranging guineas sitting on eggs in the forrest was two sitting on same clutch now only one sitting

 

[Ridgerunner]

After the eggs internal pip the hen and chicks start talking to each other. That’s before the external pip. Part of that is that they are bonding but part is to let the hen know some chicks are coming, don’t abandon the nest yet. Chicks absorb the yolk before hatch and can go three days without food and water. That way the hen can wait on the late hatchers.

But when you get an unusually early hatch the hen has to decide if she is going to take care of the ones that have hatched or the ones that might hatch later. Most hens will abandon unhatched eggs in favor of already hatched chicks. I think your problem may be even worse than that. The guinea eggs may not start internal pipping and talking to her until the hen decides to take that chick off the nest. She may decide to leave pretty early. Often a hen will wait two or three days to bring the chicks off the nest, but I’ve also seen hens come off within 24 hours of the first one to hatch. I always open the unhatched eggs to see what stage of development they were in when they quit and I’ve yet to find a living chick. Those hens are pretty good.

So what can you do? You can try doing nothing and just wait. You might get lucky. But guinea eggs seem to have a fairly wide range of when they might hatch, often spread over two or three days. I’d be real nervous about this.

If you have an incubator and she takes the chick off the nest you can try incubating the unhatched eggs. You’ll have to brooder raise them. I don’t know how cold your weather will be then but the eggs can go for a while without the hen providing heat and still be OK, but the cooler your weather the shorter that time.

You can take that chick away now and hope the hen stays on the nest to hatch the guinea eggs. You’ll probably have to raise the chick yourself in a brooder. You could try giving it back to her after the guinea eggs hatch but I wouldn’t myself. It will be different from the guinea chicks and they will not have bonded.

You could try putting food and water for the chick in the nest and hope the hen waits on the other eggs to hatch. I’d be nervous about this one on a couple of levels. You don’t want the eggs to get wet but more importantly to me, the hen might bond with the chick and when the keets hatch she might reject them. She may even kill them. They will be different. How likely is that to happen? Probably not very but I’ve had a hen not accept chicks that were “different” after she bonded with other chicks. She hatched a lone red chick and bonded with it. A couple of days later I tried to give her some incubator hatched chicks the same age. She accepted the red ones but rejected the black chicks. She had hatched and raised multicolored chicks before so I did not expect that. They are living animals. I can’t tell you what will happen with yours.

It sounds like you were not checking under that broody daily and removing any eggs that don’t belong. I always do that to avoid these staggered hatch problems. You have a situation you need to deal with. I don’t know the best way forward for you. I wish you luck.