First round hatching eggs naturally. I know a hen can be up to 8 hours off eggs but I feel like she's getting complacent. She hatched 3 so far but still has atleast 10 more to hatch. I feel like she wants to attend to those three instead of sitting and waiting the last couple days to finish off. I go up every couple hours to check on her and she will be off and I put her back on. I know she wants to tend to them and teach them stuff but I need her to stay lol. Any suggestions. I could block her so she has no choice but the babies do need to eat and stuff
Have you candled the eggs to see if they are alive? Can you hear chirping? Sometimes, a broody will know if the eggs will hatch or not. If she's a first timer, she could have just gotten a little carried away with seeing chicks and neglected the eggs. Not sure confining her will make much difference, to be honest.
How long since the first hatch? If it's been more than 24 hours, she's done sitting. It's time for her to tend to the living. This is why, when setting eggs, you set them all at once. So they all hatch within the same time frame and you don't end up with a hen that needs to tend to her chicks and leaves a bunch of partially developed chicks to grow cold in their eggs.
My apologies on never replying to this thread. In the end she never went back and sat on the rest of them but the 3 she did hatch are healthy and loving life. I did go back and Crack the eggs to see how far they were or if they would of even made it but it's like tall said. She just knew it would be a lot more time and she wouldn't be able to sit on them long enough. All of them did have fetuses in them but they were small or not even close to being fully developed. Only one could of possibly made it but it would of atlas been another 5 days before it hatched. Thank you for the replies and I'm sorry for not getting back to you.
what I do is I can do the eggs have not hatched yet. I have not found that the chickens return to the eggs once the ones have hatched. If an egg is still good I'll put them in the incubator and once they hatch I'll give them to her and usually they will take the chicks
