Help! Is my hen rejecting a single chick?

[Deannajarrett]

About a month ago, I had a hen go broody & we decided to hatch some chicks. Since we don’t have a rooster, we switched her eggs with fertilized ones from a family friend. There was a mix of eggs from several different breeds, and she sat on them just fine the entire time. Come Friday, they started hatching. She had 4 hatch Friday afternoon/evening, 1 hatch during the night Friday night & 1 hatch during the night Saturday night; 3 brownish yellow chicks, 1 yellow chick, and then the two that hatched last the consecutive nights were black. I noticed last night when I went to check, that the youngest black one that hatched the night before was left out of the nest while she had the others underneath her. The nests have a lip on them, so I figured that maybe the little chick couldn’t climb back into the nest & since it was right in front of her but just couldn’t get in, I put a couple of little pieces of wood in front of the nest to act as steps & it got in the nest. Even after it was in the nest, she ignored it trying to get underneath her until i physically lifted her up enough for the chick to get under her. I checked back a couple of more times after that last night and she still had all 6 under her. Come this afternoon after she had had them out of the nest eating, instead of going back to the nest she has used the entire time, she took her chicks to a different nest that no longer had any straw in it (when she went broody, we cleaned the house out & fixed her nest & put the other chickens in another pen so she could nest in peace & the babies wouldn’t get hurt once they hatched). She took the 4 yellow/yellow brown chicks & 1 black one into the empty nest & left the other black one out on the floor of the house once again, bc that nest doesn’t have steps to help the chick get into it since we just fixed something for the other nest last night & she hadn’t moved nests at all for more than a month. The little baby was jumping and peeping trying to get into the nest & she wasn’t paying it any attention.



Is she rejecting that 1 chick?

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Hens don't generally help chicks get under them. It needs to keep up or be left behind. It weeds out the weak. You can keep helping it. A hen that rejects a chick will peck it to death.