Hen killed chick!

[GD91]

Hens are poor mathematicians. I know you have seen the term "chicken math" used here. Chicken math is no math or reason at all. So maybe to your hen two live chicks in X amount of time makes sense.

This will get me in a lot of hot water with some people on BYC but chickens only react, they don't think, and they don't reason.
A black hen with 11 white chicks and one black chick is liable to kill the only black chick that looks just like her because it's color is different from the 11 white chicks she just hatched. X The same is true for a white hen with 11 black chicks and only one white chick. Chickens just don't have a sense of self like humans do. We look in a mirror and see ourselves. Chickens who look in the mirror only see a strange new chicken whose place on the pecking order must be sorted out.

Chicken math caries with it the inability to tell time. Hens with new chicks under them get antsy to be about the business of feeding their new children, and Zeus help any chick that is not yet strong enough to follow her. Your hen, my hen, no ones hen comes equipped with an ultra sound machine to scope out un-pipped or pipping eggs. It is much preferable if you can confine the hen and her chicks inside her nest, and keep the nest inside a safe, quite, and very dark but cool place were she should be happy to hover her brood an extra 24 hours or until they are ready to come out into chicken society.

It is also fairly common for hens to kill first pipped chicks and I am going to lay it to the fact that hens don't come equipped with a stop watch or calender and that the hen sees the first chick as an intruder. If the hen is unable to see her brood until they all are hatched out and dry then chicken math kicks in because the hen then can't make heads or tails out of which chick is which. Which brings us full circle back to, why did my hen kill the only off color chick she hatched when it is the same color she is??? "Chickens only react, they don't think, and they don't reason." I already said that didn't I?

Good post & most likely most (if not all) of this is correct.
Most animals when they look in the mirror don't realize its themselves... eventually they just choose to ignore the "other" animal.
Maybe some do eventually realize (the smart ones) .

I personally think a hens reaction to any chick is just in the hens personality. You hear about mother hens with a wonderful temperment, prepared to lead her chicks through a storm so to speak, willing to brood over them constantly. Those hens put the chicks in the center of their lives, even be willing to encourage & attend to an individual chick that is not doing as well as its siblings because her instinct is so strong.

I wonder sometimes whether its because the hens are not understood properly & then have not got the personality there enough to cope with being mothers. As put above an animal doesn't usually think. Usually. Most reactions are purely influenced by emotion & instinctive reaction the same way as you & I have the first thought go through our heads when we see an image. The thought is different depending on the personality. A women who hates baby's may well look at an image of one & think "Egh, disgusting little thing" & her instinct & reaction is to either not look too hard at the image & ignore it or get rid of it in some way I.e walk away . Meanwhile a woman who loves babies will still go "Ahhh. How adorable" even if said baby is dribbling snot.

Any bird won't use its brain & be encouraged to develop a distinct personality unless it has been encouraged to when it was younger. I certainly was not even aware I would be able to get pregnant when I was older & it was never, ever something that was encouraged by my family. Maybe if my family had not constantly drilled into my head that babies were a dirty, unnecassary drain on women's lives & careers, finances & sleep, then perhaps today I would think differently.

A woman may well think a babies picture is horrible, but she would not voice her opinion to others because they do not understand why you feel that way. As one of those women its because I know I am expected to look at a baby and go "ga, ga" by society whether I want to or not. Yes, some babies are cute, but frankly I prefer raising animals without the 18 year toll. I just don't like kids, period.
If a hen is thinking along the same lines as I do, then without the logic of "I should not do it" the bird will reject & actually kill the babies because it does not know what else to do. It has gone broody purely out of instinct, not because it wants chicks. Even I went broody once when I temporarily came off birth control & it lasted 2 years (What the hell was I thinking!?!) during which I found out I thankfully A) couldn't get pregnant easily & B) nearly ruined my marriage with foolish thoughts & words directed at my husband out of frustration due to how I was feeling. Babies were suddenly everywhere & I suddenly wanted one more than anything else, I spent stupid amounts of money on ovulation tests, books, pregnancy tests & baby gear trying to conceive over that 2 year period. My poor husband was suddenly subjected to strict diets, the removal of his ciggarettes, limited exercises, pre-planned cold sex in one position 3 x for 1 week of the month & then forced to remain abstinent for the rest of the month, I suddenly was "ga,ga" at babies in the street, crying at baby adverts & mourning each period one after the other for reason I didn't understand because I would ask myself "Why did I want a baby so suddenly?" & I couldn't even answer myself. I knew deep down I didn't really want a baby. But did I? Didn't I? The confusion for me was horrible, God knows what it must feel like to a poor animal with less mind power.

To be honest, despite my massive attempts, if during that time I had actually fallen pregnant, I think I would be very depressed right now looking after a baby.

Then as fast as it happened it went away. I quite literally woke up one morning feeling more myself again & things just got better after that.

I went back on birth control & am still trying to fix the damage I caused to my marriage because at times during that period a lot of nasty accusations & other things started happening between me & my husband, but he still doesn't seem to understand that I didn't really mean any of it.

So maybe these hens are just hatching out eggs because of their instincts are telling them & then deciding after all they don't want chicks, they don't even like chicks & they don't know what to do with them. They get distressed & then because the chicks won't/can't leave, they kill them.

Nature can be very cruel.

 

[New Flockman]

Sounds true to me and it makes me so happy that our Buff Orp has been such a great mom. I guess it's just in the "gene-routine" or not.

Our broody's chicks look NOTHING like her but both are black. She is just now, at six weeks, beginning to push them away to be on their own. She started last night by resuming roosting with the other chickens rather than nesting with them in a nest box. It had gotten pretty crowded with two six week old pullets and a hen in the box. The chicks were bewildered and protested but finally settled in the next box with each other. Evntually, they'll roost, I suppose. I note today that Momma Bea is noticably cooler with them in the yard and doesn't always come a-running when the chicks cry. She isn't tidbitting them any more either. I threw out some cantaloupe rinds for them and when the chicks tried to get a share, the bum hen, Little Red, chased them off to show she was no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. Just a couple of days previous, Bea would have torn her to shreds for that. It's all in the Genes!

 

[Northie]

GD91, I think my sister in-law just went through same sort of thing. She was going nuts over babies, and trying lots of the same things you mentioned plus visits to the specialists. They tried hard and even though there was nothing wrong with either of them, it just didn't happen. I felt awful hearing about their troubles because it seemed like I could get pregnant just looking at DH... Anyway, all of the sudden they quit trying and have been doing all kinds of fun stuff together; they're traveling all over the place, they have cool new vehicles, cool toys and cool friends. I'm not sure if they've completely given up or not but they're living it up before they try again, if they do.

With chickens I wonder if it's not mostly our fault, or a consequence of our breeding practices that some hens do not make good mothers. In nature only good (and lucky) mothers would raise babies and only their daughters who were also good mothers would continue on to raise more babies... Ect right... With our chickens, we step in and mess stuff up by intentionally breeding out broodiness and mothering instincts, bringing in incubators and raising the chicks in brooders. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, I want an incubator and a brooder too, but I can see how you could end up with mixed up hens who don't know what they're supposed to do with babies.

 

[James Roy]

It took three times for me to understand why my brooding hens would kill their hatchlings and im somewhat still confused as to how a mother could kill her own babies. Difference is i'm human and they are animals. Don't forget it!
As soon as you see a hen brooding her eggs move them away from the rest of the flock. Make sure she has a safe private place concealed from all threats.
The longer you wait to move them the harder it gets for her to accept the move.
Take the time to observe your flock for anything that might stress them and look for anything that could be a concern for disease or injury. She will kill them if disease is present.
Do your best to observe without bothering Momma or eggs. Let nature take it's place.
Definitly document on a calender as to when she started sitting on eggs. Watch her as close as possible beginning on the eighteenth day. (21 days to hatch eggs). If she kills one she more than likely will kill the rest, move the remaining eggs to a brooder away from Momma hen before it's to late or you might regret not doing so. Keep eggs at brooding temperatures. I bring my remaining eggs indoors so I can keep a good eye on them and regulate the temperature. Remember you are now the Momma and babies need a lot of attention in the beginning.
Keep in mind sometimes it's just a bad mother and no matter what you try she's going to do it again and possibly kill other chicks you have hatched if she has access to them. I cull the bad chickens as soon as possible!
Also not all hens will behave this way it really depends on Momma bird!

I have always used momma hens for brooding chicks and have more success stories than failures.
I do find it to be less work at times raising the chicks myself due to momma hen making more of a mess for me to tend to. She will scatter the food, dump the water, poop all over everything, step on chicks while your trying to care for them with food and water. Momma can be a real pain in the as_ sometimes.
The best thing if you raise chicks with momma hen is to have a place situated before hand so you don't need to move them.
Watch for hens that start behaving weird, her hormones elevate as she starts to brood.

 

[chicken266]

The mother is obviously not wanting to care for her babies
If you see her pecking her other babies who are about to hatch,
And you don't want them to die then you are sure to care for them yourselves

I wish you the best of luck :cd

 

[gruffy]

Hello saw this was an old thread but oh well.
Do you think it makes a difference if a hen was raised by people? We have a blue wyandote that sets on eggs every year. She's determined. She will even brood on an empty box the entire time and when she finally gives up she starts talking to and trying to feed an imaginary chick. So I would believe her to be an amazing mamma if she had a real one. Problem is she's not nice to new birds. I've introduced pullets to the flock and she's the only bird to chase them. Any younger bird in the yard gets thrashed on by her if she can sneak up on them. Pent up anger for not having her own chick? Anyways she just went broody for the first time this year and I took her batch and incubated it. a nice chick hatched in my incubator so I put the little guy under her at the crack of dawn this morning hopefully she would be a good mom. I found this thread and now I'm having doubts if she would actually care for a live one

 

[gruffy]

Well I have an answer. She was a good mom she watched the little bird and protected it and talked to it all day and brooded over the little guy and absolutely loved it so I left her alone with it... when I came back she had pecked him pretty bad. I feel like an idiot for trusting her but she was being a good mother to it all day and I watched her like a hawk at first. not sure what happened o.0 I'm thinking she may just be psychotic. The little bird lived and being treated. He's a little traumatised and heartbroken but already healing and should live.
But whatever the case that hen is absolutely not going to stay in my flock anymore. This was the last straw for her. She was a really sweet gentle hen not sure why she would suddenly turn violent :/

 

[drumstick diva]

I guess it's like some people - they just aren't cut out to be parents. I know I wouldn't trust her ever again. Is she at least a good egg layer?

 

[gruffy]

She doesn't lay well at all haha and since all our birds freerange our yard now that she's off the nest she's obsessed with catching the new birds even though they're all full grown now. She's been chasing them around all afternoon and just being really aggressive. I'm thinking rehoming her at least she wouldn't be eaten and there might be a bigger bird out there to put her in her place.

 

[Chook Kingdom]

My EE hen killed tons of chicks! I never used her again! It can also be that some hens just don't notice that the chick was to hatch that early (Not really early) and think it's an intruder! One of my hens just killed one of my Australorp's chicks because she thought it was intruding her nest!