Help a beginner!

[Elly martinez]

is it okay that after hatching her chicks raising them free range for the last two months the day i put her back in the coop my hen goes straight to her nest for the last 6 hrs? With her chick right beside her?

 

[GodLovesU]

Is she acting like she’s trying to lay an egg?Is the baby acting normal?

 

[Debbie292d]

When I've let hens hatch chicks in the past, the reason I stopped was because after 4-6 weeks, they were leaving them to free-range on their own while the mom hen went back to the coop to be broody again.

Once I had what you just had happen, where one chick went back to the coop to sit in the nest with the mom. When the others tried to do that, she pecked them away, but this particular one, she put up with...for the next year! Those two became inseparable.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum! Glad you joined!

is it okay that after hatching her chicks raising them free range for the last two months the day i put her back in the coop my hen goes straight to her nest for the last 6 hrs? With her chick right beside her?

The way I read this you let the hen free range with her chicks for two months but your main laying flock is locked in a coop and run. One of the hen's 2-month-old chicks is with her. Is that the only chick the hen had or are there others? Where are they?

If this is correct, how many other chickens do you have in that coop and run? How big is that coop, in feet or meters. How big is the run, in feet or meters? I'm trying to determine how crowded it is.

My first thought is that the hen was separated from the rest of the flock for so long she is no longer integrated and is hiding from the other chickens. But I don't know enough about what has happened or enough about your facilities to have any confidence in this.