Hatching Under a Broody Hen

[Arya28]

View attachment 1203110 I have a broody sitting on 2 eggs one white leghorn egg and one little green frizzle egg, I tried to give her more, but she kept pushing one egg out and away from her, and she is very little and it is cold out 20 degrees. So I am giving her just the 2.View attachment 1203115 I put these in an incubator, they are slightly behind the eggs the hen is on, but since it is cold, I am guessing her eggs may be behind as well, and these may develop on time with the eggs she has. These are BCM, Leghorn and a frizzle. Mostly i am after the frizzle, hubby likes the leghorn though. I have a place for the hen to raise babies when they hatch.

That’s awesome! Your hen is so pretty! Good luck with the eggs

Maybe she kept pushing it away because she could sense it’s not fertile or something?

 

[Arya28]

So far, 8 little chicks! Still thinking more will hatch!

 

[Arya28]

Ya know, I ask mine questions all the time and they look at me like I'm crazy. I also WANT to help and I also monitor closely especially the last couple days. I ma on day 19 in my incubator and I cant walk by without taking a peek

YES! I know I had to look every time when we had our incubator running. And after our hatch was over I still looked by habit for a few days.... it seemed lonely without it. But now we have a mama hatching some!

 

[gimmie birdies]

I moved her to a private booth, bad thing about moving a broody is they stop brooding. her eggs we ice cold this morning. now I have an incubator w/3 eggs (I put in yesterday), I was going to give to her after they hatched, and 2 cold eggs. I may pull the plug on the whole deal.

Almost, I washed the large green egg was thinking about eating it, then decided to put everybody into the incubator, but since I washed the green one who knows. Maybe it was all early enough in the incubation process that the getting chilled thing will not matter.

 

[eatbeef14]

It's not that a hen can't raise nineteen chicks it's that she might not be able to set on nineteen eggs. Hens are great mothers and you would be surprised on how many they can raise. And I wouldn't bring food and water to her, she needs the excersize that she gets going to the food. I hope everything goes well.

 

[gimmie birdies]

So I decided to put more eggs along with the hen's eggs in incubator, I don't expect the hen's eggs to make it because they got cold, and the very big green egg got washed, so it may not make it, and I don't even know if they have a good rooster on them or not, green gray eggs are frizzles, (they are what I am after, I can't wait till spring on them because the mom is older and doesn't lay much.) the blue egg is a legbar. Tan egg is a blue isbar, the dark tan with spots is a maran, and 2 leghorn eggs.

 

[Arya28]

View attachment 1203496 So I decided to put more eggs along with the hen's eggs in incubator, I don't expect the hen's eggs to make it because they got cold, and the very big green egg got washed, so it may not make it, and I don't even know if they have a good rooster on them or not, green gray eggs are frizzles, (they are what I am after, I can't wait till spring on them because the mom is older and doesn't lay much.) the blue egg is a legbar. Tan egg is a blue isbar, the dark tan with spots is a maran, and 2 leghorn eggs.

I’m sorry your hen abandoned your eggs! Good luck with hatching them... I don’t know very much about it to know if the chilling would make a difference or not, it probably depends on how long they got cold for. Because broodies can leave their eggs for periods of time, and they warm back up and are fine... BTW, I notice your Marans egg looks about like ours do now... very light lol. Ours started out very dark but have recently lightened up like yours have. Hoping they are darker in the spring!

 

[Arya28]

It's not that a hen can't raise nineteen chicks it's that she might not be able to set on nineteen eggs. Hens are great mothers and you would be surprised on how many they can raise. And I wouldn't bring food and water to her, she needs the excersize that she gets going to the food. I hope everything goes well.

So far she’s doing great with hatching a lot! We’ll see how many hatch... the only reason we’ve been giving her the food and water is because it’s chilly enough in the garage we didn’t want wet hatching chicks to get chilled while she eats... once they are all dried off we won’t need to worry about that as much.

So I just thought I would tell you all on here... the weirdest thing happened! Last night we went out to remove hatched shells and re-situate her eggs for her (good thing we did because some were away from her!) and when we picked her up (gently after checking her wings for chicks), we noticed two chicks dangling from her. As in, their little feet were off of the ground. We put her down to carefully inspect the situation, and her down was wrapped around their necks! We carefully had to trim it off her and then pull it off the chicks... but we are super lucky we found them because they would’ve been strangled!

 

[gimmie birdies]

Light marans egg- haha, I thought it was a BCM then I realized it was my Coco maran- (I have both) that is why it is light.

 

[song of joy]

So I just thought I would tell you all on here... the weirdest thing happened! Last night we went out to remove hatched shells and re-situate her eggs for her (good thing we did because some were away from her!) and when we picked her up (gently after checking her wings for chicks), we noticed two chicks dangling from her. As in, their little feet were off of the ground. We put her down to carefully inspect the situation, and her down was wrapped around their necks! We carefully had to trim it off her and then pull it off the chicks... but we are super lucky we found them because they would’ve been strangled!

Thanks for sharing this. I've only ever heard of this happening with silkie and frizzle moms, which kind of makes sense because their feathers are so soft and loosely constructed. Good thing you caught it!