How long does it take a hen to hatch eggs?

[cathy d]

On a farm people don't bring the chicks in the house unless they are weak or ill. Usually it's just survival of the fittest.A good broody hen will take care of chicks that aren't even her own and keep them nice and warm.

 

[mike chehab]

how many days for fayoumi eggs to hatch

 

[Clark101]

Once incubation starts, it takes about 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch. That’s true whether you incubate them mechanically in an incubator or naturally under a broody hen. Both approaches take the same length of time.

Especially with backyard eggs, you will probably seem some variation in when your eggs will hatch. I would expect eggs from large hatcheries to hatch in a narrower time window, closer to the ideal of 21 days.

Why?

Because in order to be efficient, large hatcheries cannot have a wide hatch window. They need their eggs to hatch on a single day, maybe within a 12 hour period, so they can ship the chicks. Because the schedule is tight, chicks that are slow to hatch aren’t likely going to be given the opportunity to hatch.

The result?

Effectively, large hatcheries are thus selecting for a narrow hatch window. Offspring that are slow to hatch will not become breeders if the hatchery is hatching their own replacement stock. Over time, I would expect that selecting for a narrow hatch window would tend to produce chicks that hatch more closely to the 21 day ideal.

In a home flock, you’re probably not doing this. I’m definitely not, because a narrow hatch window isn’t a priority. Just like you wouldn’t select the tomatoes that you raise in our vegetable garden for ship-ability or long shelf-life, in a backyard flock, you wouldn’t normally select for a narrow hatch window. The other thing to consider is that whatever you aren’t selecting for will likely decline, and you can only select for so many things at once.
If you’re setting about 40 eggs in an incubator and only about 50-60% are hatching, there are several things to look at. For one, how is the humidity? Usually, the incubator will come with recommendations for the humidity level. It will differ for chicken eggs versus duck or other types of eggs. I’ve found by experimentation that for me, running the incubator at the low end of the recommended range results in a higher hatch rate.

Temperature is another thing to consider. Are you keeping the incubator close to the target temperature at all times? If it’s in an unheated or un-air-conditioned room, monitor the temperature closely and see if it’s staying on target or not. Variations in the room temperature can greatly affect temperature within the incubator. Remember that small, tabletop incubators don’t have very big heating elements, and they can’t generate a lot of heat, so if the room is cold, they may have difficulty keeping the eggs up to temperature. Conversely, if you place the incubator in a non-air-conditioned spare room during hot weather, the incubator (at least a typical small one) has no way to cool itself, so the temperature inside can go over the target.

Another thing to consider is fertility. Some eggs simply aren’t fertile and won’t develop even if you manage the incubator perfectly. I’ve seen eggs from particular hens never develop. I’ve seen eggs from particular breeding pairs never develop. A rooster can get old and cease to be fertile or cease to fertilize the eggs. One way to diagnose fertility is by candling the eggs and breaking out the ones that don’t develop properly to determine whether there was any development at all. If you label your eggs as to which breeding pair they came from, then you can narrow down and isolate fertility problems. Then try the hen with a different rooster (and vice versa) and see if you get fertile eggs.

You can also check a few eggs from each pen for fertility by breaking them ahead of time and inspecting the yolks. But then that egg is no longer available for incubation. That’s a good approach to use a week or two before incubation so it doesn’t affect the number of eggs you have available to incubate.

 

[stover clan]

how long after eggs are laid will the hen start sitting

 

[The Moonshiner]

Whenever she feels she has as many as she needs she will start setting.
If she is broody.

 

[Painted Calls]

Whenever she feels she has as many as she needs she will start setting.
If she is broody.

Agreed.

She will sit or she won't. You can't make them go broody.

 

[Pippilotta7772]

I have chicks that are still laying and some seem broody, if I mark them and let them hatch, it being winter will the chicks survive or will I need to remove them.