help Broody hen stopped sitting- chicks are hatching

[momiphouph]

We have a broody hen that hatched 3 chicks the day before yesterday. Today she is not longer sitting on the eggs and hasnt been in the nest all day. We decided to candle the eggs and one started chirping and pippped in our hands. We quickly put it back! I could hear pecking inside another egg... SO COOL! But we are not sure what (if anything) we should do? The eggs are not real warm but obviously some are still thriving... Any thoughts? We have an incubator we can put them in if needed but we dont want to be alarmists... if this is normal. This is our first time with a broody hen but we have incubated before.

update: Mom is not going back in the nest and I can still hear several eggs chirping. The eggs are cold, what do I do???

 

[goosemama]

I've had that problem too - they lose interest just before thy are due to hatch or after the first few start. If you have an incubator I'd fire it up quickly and get the rest in there. It would be worse to leave them to get chilled - their chances of hatching would be reduced. This way you may save a few more

 

[momiphouph]

Thank YOU!!! I have the bator out and eggs in it... Im trying to remember temps and such for hatching... right now its at 91 temp and 62% humitity... we live in GA and the bator is curently outside, because when we pulled it out it was covered in Black widows! Could this get anymore exciting? Im looking up temps and such, because I cant remember what it is suppose to be. One So far we have 3 pips and one that is zipping! Hopefully we can save these babies!

 

[goosemama]

Your temps should be between 99 and l0l and humidity about 50 or 60% for the first l8 days - but if they are pipping I would assume they are past l8 days and jack up the humidity to 70% at least which will help them break free of their shells. Even with your bator a little low, it will climb and its better at 9l than cooling off without the mother hen. Good luck - think you are going to do ok.

 

[momiphouph]

Thanks ptwoody We are currently sitting at 98 and hum is 58, we're still trying to get it higher. You would think our Georgia humidity would help us out a bit.

We had one chick hatch in my sons hands! Very cool! We went ahead and put the baby in the bator to warm her up a bit. Hopefully we can get some of the temps and such balanced out... but with the bator outside, Ive read that would be harder for us to do. We may just have to do a 24 hour watch.

We have several more eggs that have not pipped but we went ahead and put them in the bator... I guess we will see? Hopefully we dont have any drown either.

 

[1muttsfan]

Black Widows?!?

 

[momiphouph]

Quote:
RIGHT!!!

One ran right in front of my sons BARE foot!

We have had some show up here and there in our garage, but thought we had a handle on them... not so much! The bator we have is one my son made, so its kinda big and we have to store it in the garage. I didnt think I would be using it this year. LOL

 

[momiphouph]

And the light bulb just blew out on our bator!!!

We got murphy on this one... we had an extra! BAM! LOL

Just hoping we didnt cause any extra issues having to open the bator again!