ShafferFamilyFarm
Hatching
- Apr 25, 2020
- 4
- 2
- 9
As a little background...
We bought a small farm a year ago. We had 9 "veteran" chickens we brought with us that were about a year to 18 months old. Then this last spring of 2020 we decided to buy 25 more to add to the flock to sell eggs on the side.
1 of the 25 ended up being a rooster. Not a big deal, he's sort of charming and has grown on us. But that leaves us with 33 hens and 1 rooster after they were all grown up. We have a large (8'x16') coop that the "young girls" use to sleep at night, but they don't use those nesting boxes we install in that coop. So al 33 hens try and lay their eggs in our 5 nesting boxes we have between our two smaller coops that we had purchased from a local farm store. Since we purchased the 25 new chickens, they do tend to jump the fence and free range more than the original group did. We've found eggs sometimes piled up in a small shed, or in random places, we're assuming it's because the nesting boxes get a little crowded during egg laying time. So here's where things get strange.
About two weeks ago, I noted that we were missing one chicken. I assumed it was taken by a predator, but didn't really have any evidence, so just assumed it was that or it got lost and added to a neighbor farm. Two weeks later now, I suddenly hear chirping under our manufactured home (which has some open panels and I have seen the chickens wander under the house while free ranging and just assume they're curious and come back out). But I go to where the open panel is, and low and behold I see the missing chicken near the exit to outside, and she has 12 little chicks hanging around her in tow. So here are my questions:
1) They appear to be different breeds as best I can tell with tiny, baby chickens, but could it be possible she's been moving fertilized eggs under the house to add to a collection to sit on them? Or more likely more than one chicken was laying eggs under the house?
2) How is it possible to have 12 fertilized eggs with one rooster in a flock of 33 hens all hatch about the same time. I'm fairly confident they haven't been hatching over the course of a week and she's been waiting for more. It was like clearly there were babies chirping under the house today when there was no background noise, so I think they all hatched within a couple days. How can that happen?
3) Assuming the most plausible thing I can think of would be that my rooster is fertilizing a lot of hens daily, and 2-3 of them maybe are laying eggs under the house and this was the product of that event. Does anyone have a sense of how many will be roosters? I can try and watch some YouTube videos to sex them, but I'm wondering if there are statistics out there that show that like 90% of hens, or is it more 50/50 like humans?
We bought a small farm a year ago. We had 9 "veteran" chickens we brought with us that were about a year to 18 months old. Then this last spring of 2020 we decided to buy 25 more to add to the flock to sell eggs on the side.
1 of the 25 ended up being a rooster. Not a big deal, he's sort of charming and has grown on us. But that leaves us with 33 hens and 1 rooster after they were all grown up. We have a large (8'x16') coop that the "young girls" use to sleep at night, but they don't use those nesting boxes we install in that coop. So al 33 hens try and lay their eggs in our 5 nesting boxes we have between our two smaller coops that we had purchased from a local farm store. Since we purchased the 25 new chickens, they do tend to jump the fence and free range more than the original group did. We've found eggs sometimes piled up in a small shed, or in random places, we're assuming it's because the nesting boxes get a little crowded during egg laying time. So here's where things get strange.
About two weeks ago, I noted that we were missing one chicken. I assumed it was taken by a predator, but didn't really have any evidence, so just assumed it was that or it got lost and added to a neighbor farm. Two weeks later now, I suddenly hear chirping under our manufactured home (which has some open panels and I have seen the chickens wander under the house while free ranging and just assume they're curious and come back out). But I go to where the open panel is, and low and behold I see the missing chicken near the exit to outside, and she has 12 little chicks hanging around her in tow. So here are my questions:
1) They appear to be different breeds as best I can tell with tiny, baby chickens, but could it be possible she's been moving fertilized eggs under the house to add to a collection to sit on them? Or more likely more than one chicken was laying eggs under the house?
2) How is it possible to have 12 fertilized eggs with one rooster in a flock of 33 hens all hatch about the same time. I'm fairly confident they haven't been hatching over the course of a week and she's been waiting for more. It was like clearly there were babies chirping under the house today when there was no background noise, so I think they all hatched within a couple days. How can that happen?
3) Assuming the most plausible thing I can think of would be that my rooster is fertilizing a lot of hens daily, and 2-3 of them maybe are laying eggs under the house and this was the product of that event. Does anyone have a sense of how many will be roosters? I can try and watch some YouTube videos to sex them, but I'm wondering if there are statistics out there that show that like 90% of hens, or is it more 50/50 like humans?
