help, broody attacking her eggs!

[cat]

My chicken has been sitting on her eggs for seven days now. she has been really attentive to them and everything seemed to be going exactly as nature intended.

This morning however when I took her off her nest to eat, one of her eggs had clearly been pecked apart and some of the shell eaten, though the membrane was not pierced. I would be surprised if anyone else could have gotten to them as she is very protective of them and we do not have the same predator problems you experience in America, here in Ireland.

My question is should I take the eggs away in case she kills them all... I have an incubator and another hen that has gone broody, I don't know which would be best,

or

do I leave them with her because she must know something was wrong with that one.

I am hoping that those of you with tons of hatching experience might have an idea as to what is the best thing to do. Thanks.

 

[dancingbear]

She probably got off the nest by herself to eat, most hens will, and another hen got in the nest while she was off. Or she may have stepped on that egg when getting back in the nest. If she'd pecked it and broken it, I doubt she would have stopped there. She more likely would have eaten the whole thing, shell and all. So would another chicken.

I don't think the egg was "attacked" at all, probably stepped on by accident. Or maybe the shell was weak, or had tiny cracks, and it just broke when the hen was turning the eggs and shuffling them. They do that, you know, move the outer eggs to the center, the center eggs to the edges. That way they all get moved from warmer/cooler spots, and development will be even.

 

[busylizzie]

How funny - i was in exactly the same position yesterday and I am in the UK too!

My hen was sitting on 12 eggs (10 potentially fertile - 2 snuck in by other eggs!) and i found she had totally eaten one! I have a mini incubator and candled all the eggs yesterday at day 6......2 were duds - so i put 3 definately good eggs in the incubator and gave the rest back to the hen to see what would happen......hopefully, both hen and incubator ones will hatch but wanted to be safe as my kids are very excited!!

Maybe you could candle them, split them up between hen, other broody and incubator - to spread the risk?

I am a newbie though - see what the others say!

good luck