Managing the flock

[markb816]

My hens are pretty much just pets with occasional eggs that I enjoy eating.
8 hens; 2silver wyandottes, 2delewares, 1RIR, 1Leghorn. and a big mixed rooster.
All birds are around 7-8months old.
I would like to someday experience having some baby chicks. No, not eggs or day old ordered but naturally from a hen.
So my question is, What is the best hen with the trait of being motherly? All mine seem to just lay an egg and then go on about their way.
So I am maybe interested in finding a good breed hen that will be a good mother and a good candidate for having some chicks and raising them. A single hen that I can put with my flock now and someday know that she may have some eggs that will be chicks and then the circle of life continues.
What is the chances of this happening. And I take it chic raising is not a foul community event that all the other chickens in the hen will help out with.
Will the other hens or rooster be a threat to the motherly hen or any of its offspring.
Please forgive me. I know my questions are random, but I do appreciate all the help

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

Sounds like you need SILKIES!!!! Yes, when they go broody you have to remove them and put them in a different pen.

 

[gryeyes]

Of the "regular type" of chickens, Black Australorps and any of the Marans are known to go broody often. Buff Orpington's occasionally go broody. (That's what it's called when a hen sits on eggs to incubate them for hatching.) Silkies are often used in flocks simply as broodies of other chickens' eggs!

Matter of fact, here's a really good table of breeds that lists that trait: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Will the other hens or rooster be a threat to the motherly hen or any of its offspring.

I too thought this would be an issue and was very surprised...

Other hens will be 'run off' by the very protective mother hen. My mothers bring their babies out to mingle with the rest of them from the first time they take them off the nest...usually on day two after they are born.

The rooster behavior really surprised me...not only do they not hurt them, they are protective too. I have some roosters in pens and the babies will walk right through the fencing and go in with them. The roosters virtually ignore them at worst. And these are strange roosters, not the breed of the hen, or the chicks and they had nothing to do with that batch of chicks.