Hen hatching two different aged eggs??? Please help!!

[chicklittlel]

If there are unhatched eggs the hen will usually stay on the nest with the new chicks for at least 24 hours or longer. It will not hurt them to go without food or water for that length of time when newly hatched. You can normally hear them peeping as soon as they hatch. My hen left the nest after the first two hatched and so far I have slipped an additional three under her without any problem. Be careful--you're about to get "hooked"--hatching eggs can be addicting. That's how I went from two pair to over eighty chickens. At least mine are all banty, but I spend all my time building new coops and runs and my trips to the feed store have become very frequent.

 

[redhen689]

If you candle the eggs, you should be able to tell when the chicks have "internally pipped" (they have broken into the air cell) and are breathing. You can often hear the chicks "chirping/peeping" while still in the eggs. They will usually hatch withing 24-48 hours after this. If you have a storage container/Rubber-maid bin, you can set it up as a brooder in your house. You need to keep the chicks warm, suspend a light (maybe 100 watts using a desk lamp or whatever you have handy) into the box and check the floor of the brooder with a thermometer. You want to have an area under the light at about 95 degrees F, (maybe about 35C.) If they are huddled under the light all of the time, they might be too cool, if they are away from the light, the light might be producing too much heat, raise it up a little higher.

I forget if you said if you marked the eggs when you candled them. You can mark which ones you think are more developed/ less developed with a code, so that you don't have to candle all of the eggs every time, just candle a couple of the most developed ones.

 

[antrimfarm]

Just in case anyone who helped me was interested:

We were wrong about the eggs. We started with 12, all fertile. 4 broke, possibly due to a small nest box or the other hens trying to lay in her box.

Seven of them hatched yesterday within 12 hours of eachother. There is one egg left, not sure if it will hatch or not but everything else seems to be going great! Darth Vader is a great parent so far, (unlike her namesake lol!!) And of course the chickies are as cute as can be! The rest of my flock is leaving them be and so far all is well. Thanks so much for your help! I am so relieved that I was wrong.

 

[chicklittlel]

So glad to hear that everything is turning out OK. Have you candled the remaining egg to see if anything might be in it? If you use a strong flashlight you should be able to see if anything is going on inside it. Anyway, glad to hear that all the rest are doing well. Remember what I told you though--it's so easy to become addicted to hatching eggs! The chicks are just so darned cute!!!