I have a flock of about 30 chickens with 3 rooysters and 3 ducks on the side. Well my ducks started laying eggs long story short one of my older hens was broody and would sit on the duck eggs right after being laid. Now I have about 12 eggs at different stages of development. Well I let her sit the eggs and about 2 weeks ago an egg hatched no surprise a chicken had lad an egg in with my duck eggs. We moved momma, chick and eggs into a dog create with food and water. All was well until yesterday when one of the duck eggs hatched. All seemed fine I got home today after work my husband reported that when ever heard would look in on ducky he would find momma chicken had pushed out from the eggs and it was shivering in the cold. Well then Ifound she had pecked at ducky right behind the head at the neck and now there is a soar there. Of course I took momma out to the coop and set up a brooder with heat lamp and my husband said take the eggs in there with ducky and chick. I have it nice and warm at about 98 to 99 with a wet sponge for humidity and wood shavings. Should I go buy an incubator tomorrow or take the eggs out to another broody hen? And put triple antibiotic on it?
You can leave the eggs with the mother, she'll continue to hatch them. This is the problem with staggered hatches, the mother will either stop sitting on the eggs to care for the chicks/ducklings or, as you have seen happen, abandon or even kill the hatched ones to keep caring for the eggs. She has a much better chance of hatching the eggs than you do without an incubator, so let her keep them and take the ducklings as they hatch. You can let her keep the last couple if they hatch fairly close together or just the last one and she should take care of those. Or give the eggs to a different broody if you feel more comfortable but with them being staggered you'll run into the same problem either way. As for the injured duckling, you can put neosporin without pain relief on the wounds and hopefully she will heal up quickly. They are very resilient little things.
