Hen won't leave coop, sitting on unfertilized egg all day. Help!

[drumstick diva]

Would love to hear the results

 

[Bobmagno]

Hello everyone,

It's been a little over a week now so here is a quick update:

We originally got 12 fertilized eggs for our broody chicken (she looked pretty excited) and... we're down to 8 but wait there's more!
I marked all of the fertilized eggs however we now have only 6 of them that are marked. Two other 2 not! and they're not coming from the broody chicken, they're coming from our other chicken (the color of the eggs are significantly different)

So my question is, where are the 6 marked eggs that we're missing?? We found only one broken egg outside the nesting box, but there's NO trace of the other 5. Does that mean one of them ate them?

Our nesting box is pretty small, and doesn't have a lot of room for two hens. But some how the other hen managed to get in there and lay a couple. And maybe ate a couple of the other ones too? We couldn't believe this!

Anyway, we put a network camera we used for our kid to see if we can figure this out. Btw, the coop is very safe and there's no way creatures can get in there at night. (except for maybe snakes but I've never seen one around here)

I'll let you know once we solve the mystery!

Here's Betty


-R-