Hatching Eggs, I think I might have oops’d!

[5paceDandy]

So this is my first spring with chickens and ducks. My flock consists of chickens (17 hens and 2 roosters), ducks (12 hens and 8 drakes) and 3 geese (all ganders). With the exception of 2 of my duck mammas, the entire flock is a year old, give or take a few months and up until about a month ago I collected all the eggs laid daily. The entire flock shares a coop and pen that includes a duck house (a structure with a low roof and easy access for the ducks), an outer roosting area where most of the chickens like to sleep bow that the weather has warmed up, an inner roosting area with some raised nesting boxes and an inner duck house with some ground level nesting boxes and no roosting bars overhead. Despite having their own raised nesting boxes I noticed that the chickens and ducks had taken to laying eggs in ONLY the ground level boxes in the inner duck house and about a month ago a number of the hens(both chickens and ducks) started to get a little broody and seemed to have chosen a handful of nests that they wanted to sit on, so when I did my daily collection, I would collect the individual eggs laid randomly around the coop and pen, but leave the eggs in the various nests alone. Fast forward a month and I was pleasantly surprised, though not shocked, to discover when I came out to feed the flock that the flock has 12 little ones freshly hatched and already swimming with mamma in the duck pond. Now, finally, to where I feel I might have made an oops… while 12 ducklings have hatched, I still have 7 nests with hens still actively and intently sitting on them and, because they have always had someone sitting on them, I had not realized just how many eggs were in each nest (and there are A LOT)! But at this point I am not sure what exactly to do. I haven’t wanted to chase a hen off a nest for fear of causing her to abandon the eggs, but I can’t imagine they are able to successfully hatch all of the eggs they are sitting on either. What do I do? Should I risk causing one or all the hens to abandon their nests, or should I let them hatch what they can and then collect whatever eggs they can’t? I feel like a real noob with this one!

 

[Canadian Wind]

Have you tried checking to see if they're fertile? The hens do need to get off the nest at some point to go eat and drink, you could do it then.

If other hens lept laying in the box while one was sitting, you may end up with eggs at different stages of development. Do you have an incubator? If not, you may just have to toss those extra eggs unless another broody steps up and takes over.