yeye5
Songster
Hi, all! First-time hatcher here.
My s/o and I were talking all day yesterday about encouraging a hen to go broody (we have an entirely separate coop and run to use as a "maternity ward"). I did a ton of research. This is my first real flock (previously brooded chicks for my neighbors), so I am SO excited for babies!
Anyways, after lots of discussion and prep, and even selecting the Australorp we thought we might want to sit, we got home from work yesterday and got ready to put the girls in for the night. We opened the nesting box door, and we saw nothing but fluffy chicken butt...one of the Australorp /mixes/, bigger and not quite as shy as the purebreds, was there. No big deal; I reached in to nudge her off and she whipped her head around, puffed up all her feathers, and hissed at me. Yikes!I reached under her to see what, if anything, she was sitting on, and she bit (not pecked!) me. So, boyfriend grabbed a hoe and tried to push her off with that...she just bit the hoe instead.
We're looking at each other like "this hen is broody," so I gently reach under the butt-fluff and grab the egg. She clicks low and loud. I then gently placed it right by the lip of the nesting box. She looked at it for about two seconds before gently rolling it back under her body with her beak.
She's settled on fake eggs in the maternity ward now, but we'll be swapping them out for fertile eggs tomorrow if she keeps sitting. We have partridge Cochin, blue Andalusian, and a few "hatchery assortment." We can't wait to see what we get!
That's great! You took your life into your hands trying to move her as you saw, lol! I feel that means she's def serious about her job! And she Is already in the maternity ward, right? So all you have to do ow is the egg switch...
My broody silkie is the opposite. She's very laid back about it. But obviously yours is Not.
On this forum I've been advised by several ppl to make the egg switch at night . If you need light--and you probably will need it to ensure you've removed all the decoy eggs, you can cover the flashlight with red or blue (not sure if one isbetter than the other) saran wrap type stuff. The muted colored light is supposed to be easier/less startling to the broody.
Do you know how many fake eggs she's on? I usually do know that fact myself. I bring an empty egg carton out and another egg carton holding the real eggs. Easier to count that way than trying to keep peering under her.
Plz do let us know how it goes when you make the switch.
I'd also suggest keeping written records of just about everything from times of day/night you switch the eggs, to when she gets up for her stretch and nature break/s, outside climate, humidity etc.
This way you'll have a baseline for the factors that influenced your hopefully very successful first hatch.
Good luck!!!
I don't like the incubator by the way...humidity was a BEAR to keep up at lockdown. But I guess I know now what to expect. 
i candled them past night and 4 were definitelt moving. But 2 out of the four seemed to have bigger chicks with the space in the egg a solid black mass. And the other two had a partial black dense area. The air sacs looked good but i dont understand why theyre development is different. Have i done something wrong?
