Incubating the natural way... Ups and Downs on my first attempt.

[KendyF]

Day 1: Broody chicken is discovered, she is flattened out on all the eggs in the coop, and fighting others for their eggs. Rolling and moving all eggs into her "clutch". We take some eggs, but replace them with fertile eggs.
Day 2: She is still stealing eggs and other chickens are moving her to lay in their favorite spot. We build a small box and move her and the eggs to low traffic area in the coop. She claims the nest and gets comfy on the eggs and straw nest we built.
Day 3: We do not disturb her, she is still cranky and sitting.
Day 4: We move her to find she is still somehow getting new eggs in there, and they are not hers.
Day 5: We move her to discover she has moved all the straw and the eggs are laying on slated boards with air coming up between the slots, eggs don't feel as warm. (We have to move her with gloves, as she doesn't just peck, she bites... hard.) We find a small piece of carpet to put under her, crack a completely cool egg, to discover it is full of veins and had "Started to incubate". We put the rest back under her as we are unsure if all or just some have cooled.
Day 6: Hen is sitting, no major developments.
Day 7: same as 6
Day 8: same as 6 and 7
Day 9: She has kicked an egg out from under her and it is totally cold. We crack the egg and it is full of veins and a small dark spot. We don't know when it quit incubating...
To be continued....

 

[chooks4life]

Healthy eggs can be left overnight to chill and still survive. Being frozen solid would obviously not apply, lol.

Being completely cooled just makes a healthy egg go into metabolic pause, so to speak. The egg stops developing while it waits for heat to return and trigger development. Weakly eggs from weakly hens can't cope with the slightest mistreatment, but healthy eggs from healthy hens can cope with a surprising amount of abuse.

During winter I had hens with sneaky clutches they hid, some of which they worked on for months; the reason I didn't find them was because they kept returning to the coop at night so I thought it was a case of predators taking eggs or hens not laying, not clutches being hidden. The longest I've seen a chicken clutch take to hatch was about a month, and it took so long because the hen had weak and partial instinct and would leave it every night to go sleep in the main coop. If the eggs are healthy they can cope with being thrown as far as you can throw them (and still live), bouncing off rocks and trees, dropped over 2 meters onto a hard floor, left cold, having incubation periods stretched out and sufficient heat to develop only administered in short periods, being covered in mud or feces to the extent that the chick would be receiving only about 10% of the gas exchange supposedly necessary to survive, being soaked or completely submerged... All this makes it sound like I've been cruel to my embryonic chickens, lol, and I sometimes have, but not deliberately, and most of it wasn't my doing.

The most vulnerable, delicate time is when the chick has begun to hatch, when it's committed and can't just go back into suspension, if you know what I mean.

Even then, I don't know if you've heard about 'swimming' chicks, or the likes, but I've both seen and heard of chicks which were totally cold, stiff and for all intents and purposes dead, not breathing, being brought back with the addition of warmth.

Best wishes with your endeavor.

 

[KendyF]

wow! Thank you for this information! I had no idea. I guess I won't break eggs which are totally cool to the touch any more.

 

[chooks4life]

It's a good idea, and in the interests of gaining experience it might benefit you to conduct some minor experiments setting eggs you think are dead. Some will be and you'll possibly have some stinky messes to clean up but some won't be dead and you'll have live chicks. Always pretty cool when an egg you thought was a goner hatches a chick. Got a few of those lucky ones running around my flock.

Best wishes.

 

[KendyF]

Thank you!

 

[KendyF]

Two days away from the estimated hatch. We have pretty much been leaving the broody alone. I occasionally see an egg slightly out from under her, but come back later and she is solidly sitting on all of them. She is taking her work very seriously. We believe she has 8 potentially viable eggs at this time.

 

[chooks4life]

Hope all goes well for yous.

Best wishes.

 

[fisherlady]

Good luck on your hatch...but be warned, once you get to watch a mama hen with her chicks you will be hooked!!! I adore watching a broody do her thing. I'm looking forward to pics!

 

[KendyF]

Ohhh, I hope to see this!

 

[KendyF]

First chick hatched about 2 hours ago, I went out to float test and perhaps discard the eggs!!!!