How does a chicken start her nest?

[father0fnine]

Hi all,

I have watched my Muscovy's raise young for a couple of years now and I know how a duck will make her nest. She will lay about one egg a day until she is done (that is about 12 eggs for my girls) before she will start sitting on it. I watch and quietly count the eggs each day when I go out to feed until I see her sitting and glaring daggers at me if I try to get close. I also know to expect all the eggs to hatch within a day of each other and any after that are bad.

How do chickens do it? When do they go broody (if they're going to go broody)? How does the hatching happen?

D

 

[aart]

About the same...kinda.
They may or may not lay a clutch then set on them, that could depend on your management preferences. I gather all eggs every day, then if a bird goes broody I decide whether to let her hatch or not. I usually don't let them hatch as I prefer to use an incubator

They can go broody at any time, they are less seasonal hatchers than ducks or geese.
These are the sign to look for:
Is she on nest most the day and all night?
When you pull her out of nest and put her on the ground, doesn't she flatten right back out into a fluffy screeching pancake?
Does she walk around making a low cluckcluckcluckcluckcluck(ticking bomb) sound on her way back to the nest?
If so, then she is probably broody and you'll have to decide how to manage it.

There are many ways/scenarios that a chicken might hatch some eggs.
I like to separate broody by wire in the main coop to set and hatch.
The actual hatching is much the same, but chickens only take 21 days instead of the muscovy 35 days.

 

[chickens really]

Yes..I separate my Broody or mark the eggs because the other Hens will deposit eggs in her nest or cause her stress. Broody Hens like privacy when setting.

 

[father0fnine]

About the same...kinda.

So (in general) a hen stops laying once she starts sitting on the nest... and I won't really know if she's going to sit the nest until she's layed all her eggs for that clutch?

My plan is to let the roos and hens do what they do and if I get babies, great! If not, ok. I just have to decide what the criteria is for me to decide the eggs won't be incubated and clear them out.

D

 

[Shadrach]

Sometimes the hens egg laying mechanism doesn't switch off immediately after she decides to sit on her clutch. I've had broody hens here sitting and still laying eggs for the first couple of days. I think 3 days is the maximum I've seen. If they continue laying after that then ime they are not properly broody. Some seem to practice a bit before they decide to do the job.
Occasionally a hen will give all the broody signs, sit for a few days and then change her mind and abandon the nest.

 

[Shadrach]

These are pictures of broody hens sitting on clutches in the nest box in my house.
I've had 6 or 7 different hens sit here. As you can imagine, it's far from quiet given I live here as well. Sometimes I move them to a maternity unit I have just outside my front door on day 17, other times I let them hatch here and then move them so they have immediate access to the outside.
Most of the hens here will happily make nests outside, usually close to the house where the comings and goings of the other animals that live here don't seem to disturb them.
I've found it in general quite difficult to get them to sit in secluded nest boxes in their coops.
The chickens here have unlimited access to the house during daylight hours and come and go as they please.

 

[ChemicalchiCkns]

Do they Peck when you use the switches?

 

[Shadrach]

Do they Peck when you use the switches?

Strangely they don't.

 

[aart]

So (in general) a hen stops laying once she starts sitting on the nest... and I won't really know if she's going to sit the nest until she's layed all her eggs for that clutch?

My plan is to let the roos and hens do what they do and if I get babies, great! If not, ok. I just have to decide what the criteria is for me to decide the eggs won't be incubated and clear them out.

D

Maybe....I don't know really, because the idea of leaving eggs laying around while waiting for a hen to go broody seems wasteful to me.

@Shadrach did those hen lay clutches in your 'house' nests, then decide to set?

 

[Ridgerunner]

So (in general) a hen stops laying once she starts sitting on the nest... and I won't really know if she's going to sit the nest until she's layed all her eggs for that clutch?

My plan is to let the roos and hens do what they do and if I get babies, great! If not, ok. I just have to decide what the criteria is for me to decide the eggs won't be incubated and clear them out.

D

I'm not sure what your goals are, why do you have the chickens? Do you use the eggs? Why do you want more chickens? Your management techniques should be based on your goals.

Each chicken is different and has their own personality and behavioral traits. Before chickens were domesticated most were pretty much did like your Muscovy. The hens would lay a clutch of eggs, hatch them, raise her brood, then do it again in the good weather seasons. Then during the bad weather seasons when food was more scarce they'd take a break to recharge their system, molt to replace worn feathers, then start the cycle again in spring. You can always find an exception with living animals but that was the general pattern that provided for survival of the species.

We have domesticated them, some more than others. A lot of hens will never go broody, broodiness has been bred out of them. But some hens still go broody regularly. Instead of laying a few eggs per year some now lay practically every day for most of the year. Instead of them depending on what they can find to eat we provide them with highly nutritious meals every day. The instincts for that general pattern is still there for most of them but for a lot of chickens those instincts are really weak. For some they are pretty strong.

There are many different signs that a hen is broody or is thinking about it. Broodiness is caused by hormones and those hormones can be at different strengths in different hens. I've had several hens walk around fluffed up and clucking, spend a lot of time on the nest, be defensive of her nest, and exhibit those signs without ever truly kicking over into full broody mode. I've had many that just flip a switch, full broody mode in an instant. My test as to whether they are worthy of eggs is that they need to spend two consecutive nights on the nest instead of sleeping in their normal spot. Some day there will be an exception but it's worked for me so far.

You can get into some good debates on here about whether allowing a hen to build up a clutch of eggs one day at a time will induce them to go broody. I've tried it a few times, adding one marked real egg or a fake egg a day to a nest to see what happens. It never worked for me. I did have a hen go broody once but that was on a different nest so I don't think that counts. My hens do tend to go broody so it was not a case of broodiness being totally bred out of them. Your phrasing was "I won't really know if she's going to sit the nest until she's layed all her eggs for that clutch" You won't know if she will even then.

On the other hand one time I was gone for a week and the person taking care of the chickens failed to gather eggs. They really built up. When I got back it was dark and I had two different hens on nests acting broody. I tossed all eggs so I could start over fresh with good eggs. Both hens stopped acting broody. If I had left the eggs I think there is a pretty good chance one or both would have switched over to full broody mode. From my experience you cannot make a hen go broody when you want her to but allowing a clutch to build up might hep some to start thinking about it.

The 21 day clock starts when incubation starts, not when the egg is laid. That avoids a staggered hatch where some hatch way earlier than others. Then the hen has to decide whether she takes her first chicks off the nest for food and water and abandons her unhatched eggs or lets her first to hatch die while she is sitting on the other eggs. Most hens choose the already hatched. If a hen keeps laying while broody the later eggs she laid won't hatch on time. Also, a hen builds up excess fat, if you ever butcher a hen and compare to a cockerel or rooster you will clearly see that. This fat is mostly what the hen lives off of while she is broody. That way she doesn't have to spend a lot of her time looking for food instead of incubating her eggs. For these reasons a hen typically stops laying eggs when she flips to full broody mode. She doesn't need to use stored nutrition to make eggs that she needs to live off of while broody. You can always find exceptions to anything but mine stop laying eggs when they switch to full broody mode.

An egg can say viable for several days after it is laid. Hens can hide a nest and lay a clutch at an egg a day for over two weeks and still hatch most of them. But the older an egg gets the less likely it is to hatch after certain limits. The closer the egg is to ideal storage conditions the longer it remains viable. I often store eggs in my house that is too warm and has lower humidity for a week and get great hatch rates. Under better conditions an egg can easily last two weeks. But I like to start with fresher eggs so I know they have a better chance of hatching. Also, I do not like to let eggs stay in the coop overnight unless they are under a broody hen. I consider them a temptation to egg eating predators such as snakes or rats.

The way I manage mine I collect all the eggs every day except for the one golf ball I leave as a fake egg. When I see a hen start to act like she might be going broody I start collecting the eggs I want her to hatch. After she has passed her two night test and I have enough eggs I mark them and give the eggs to her. Then I check every day after the others have finished laying and remove any unmarked eggs, these are still good to use.

This system fits my goals and my observations and knowledge of what I think is going on with the individual chickens. Others do things in totally different ways for their own reasons.

I really like a broody hen to hatch the chicks and raise them, but i cannot control when a hen will go broody. So I also have an incubator.