homocidal broody

[dancingbear]

I gave my bad mom hens to a neighbor down the road, along with an extra roo. He only has one other hen. It's possible that without all the commotion of my flock, (36 adult/and near adult chickens, around 30 chicks, a poult, 10 adult guineas and 8 keets) multiple broodies at once, young roos running around, etc., they may brood and hatch and mother just fine, in a quieter environment. Or not, but they got a new home, anyway. I considered eating them.

I have a theory. Layer breeds are breed to discourage broodiness, and increase egg production. Hatcheries breed production layers into other breeds, from time to time, (which is why serious breeders don't generally want hatchery stock) to increase egg production so they can have more eggs to hatch/sell. I think this mixing of non-broody breeds with broody breeds, can sometimes mess up their instincts, like my two bad moms, and your killer mom. They get parts of the brooding/mothering instinct, other parts are missing.

I guess I've been lucky not to encounter such a thing as what you just went through.

 

[ma hen]

i have a silkie hen that did this,she was great at sitting on her eggs but one morning i found a dead chick , so i thought maybe it died durning the hatching well i found another the next but i saw her pecking!!!! it, i took the chick still wet from being just born ,i saved it but now the silkie is next to fluffy my top silkie hoping she will learn this was her first hatch but if not she is gone,but i put some fake eggs and some Cochin's eggs that are not fertile under her just in case.

 

[TreeHugger]

I've even had a few silkies that were horrible mothers. I had one that killed all of her chicks but never left the nest & stayed broody. Some of them just don't make good mothers. On the other hand I have a silkie hen that decided to adopt my month old polish chicks. I don't think she cared that they were to old for a mother hen

 

[Enchanted Sunrise Farms]

Sorry this happened, but glad the eggs are hatching. i had two silkie broodies hatching eggs together for the first time that did the same thing, start attacking the first chick as it hatched. Luckily i had my baby monitor in with them and saw it happening so was able to save it and the other eggs. i'm not angry at the hens - they just don't have the brainpower to hatch eggs. They are very sweet otherwise.

i have since found other silkie hens in my flock that are excellent brooders and mothers. i guess it's just trial and error to find the good moms.

 

[cat]

Here are the babies that have survived. I cannot believe they made it through such a disastrous hatch! We have two eggs still in the bator, one has almost zipped so hopefully we will have saved all the chicks she did not kill.

Thank you so much to everyone who posted, it really helps to know you are not on your own when everything goes wrong, that's the great thing about BYC.

We have had a good think about what to do and have decided to sell our Orp and keep one of the babies to replace her. I know there are lots of people who would give her a second chance, but in a small flock I just don't have the room for a mean bird and this is not her first offence. I think she would be better suited to someone with other big birds as she is very dominant with the smaller ones in my flock.

Thank you all so much for your kind words. x

 

[rancher hicks]

Well this is good to know. I have a cochin bantam on eggs. She has gotten off a couple of time and once got back in the wrong nest. I quarantined her and she has been on the eggs since but off for a little to eat and poop. The eggs are due in a few days.
All the literature says this breed or that breed make good mothers. Well here's proof they sometimes do not.
I personally will breed only those that are good moms and not let the others sit.
But how can you keep them from going broody?

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
So glad you were able to hatch those, congrats on saving them. There's no reason to think they wouldn't hatch, as long as they'd stayed reasonably warm. Moving them wouldn't hurt anything, and just being next to the ones that got attacked shouldn't affect them, either.

My DH took some eggs that had been left in the nest when the others hatched, and he thought they were dead. He'd put them in a carton, brought them up and put them in the garbage by the back of the house. It was a sunny day, the inside of the garbage can was warm, and a little while later he heard peeping. Those chicks had hatched in the carton in the trash can! They were fine, BTW.

I don't know if a hen can "learn" to be a good mom. I suspect that the instinct is either intact, or it isn't. I do think environmental factors could affect how they react, though. A hen might go all to pieces in a noisy, chaotic environment, (like my place) but do fine in a quieter one, with no overt threats or disturbances.

 

[ma hen]

great pic of the chicks so cute!!! gald they made it

 

[Kimblee]

Quote:
Sounds like some of my cousins.... Getting pregnant is good, having a tiny baby and everyone's attention is good...

Then they abandon the baby on a relative and go out to get knocked up again...

We have no broody ladies.... I want Silkies!

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
Sounds like some of my cousins.... Getting pregnant is good, having a tiny baby and everyone's attention is good...

Then they abandon the baby on a relative and go out to get knocked up again...

We have no broody ladies.... I want Silkies!

I doubt the motivation is anything like humans. I seriously doubt they have the capability of thinking through the whole process that much. I think it's much more likely a glitch in the DNA that causes the broody/mothering instincts to go haywire. Being broody is a hormone-induced trance state. It's not something a bird decides to do. It just happens. Then the mothering instinct is produced by a brain chemical called oxytocin. If the brain doesn't produce oxytocin, the bird (or whatever critter, including humans) will not feel motherly, and will not bond with the baby or babies.