hatching natural

[flamewatcher]

I have been letting my eggs remain where the hens lay them i hope that they will hatch them naturaly how may eggs should i leave and for how long there is more than a dozen in the nest now

 

[FarmerMac]

I collect all the eggs but have one fake one per box. If one of my hens acts broody, I add more fake eggs to see if she sits on them. Once I see that she will not leave the eggs, I replace the fake eggs with the ones I want to hatch. Also I make sure to mark those eggs so if another hen lays an egg in the same nest, I can remove it. I have a couple of game hens that go broody, all my other hens never go broody.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Most hens can't cover more than a dozen eggs. I have piled extra straw in the nest to make a deep bowl shaped nest and have hatched up to 18-20 eggs at times but with that many eggs piled on each other the hen has a tendency to break a few of them. Eggs less than 10 days old have the best hatchability but I've hatched eggs as old as 3 weeks with with a good hatch rate. Use a Sharpie to mark the eggs with the date so you can rotate the old eggs out while keeping the most recently laid eggs in the nest in case a hen goes broody.

 

[FarmerMac]

I forgot to mention that I bought the fake eggs from eBay. They are porcelain eggs look real, there are brown and others white, make sure to mark these ones too so you leave them in their nest box.