Iam new to raising chickens and I spend lots of time on this site asking questions and figuring out the best ways to care for our small flock. We started this project for our granddaughter so she has been hands on from the start (she is 9). On Sunday night our broody hen whom had been sitting on her first ever eggs for 22 days finally hatched 3 beautiful babies. My granddaughter was just so excited uuntil she noticed the 7 unhatched eggs. We told her we would wait and see what would happen. By Monday morning the hen and chicks had moved off the nest to a new location leaving the other eggs. We gave her until Tuesday evening but she was done with the rest of her eggs so my husband took the nesting box out with the old eggs gave her a clean box for her and her babies, my granddaughter didn't want us to throw the eggs away while she was there so my husband put them in our basement for the night. Our son came and picked up Morgan and we were sitting in the basement for a few minutes and we heard peeping coming from one of the eggs. We didn't know what to do so I flew onto my tablet and started reading on byc. Most said don't try to hatch it or help it out of the shell or just throw it out it probably has something wrong with it. But being a retired paramedic there was no way I was tossing it out . I set up a heat lamp in a small box and started the watch!! It was long and sometimes painful to listen and see nothing happen. Somewhere around 2am I gave up and went to bed. When I got up around 8 I headed to the basement as I opened the door I said please dear lord let there be life and by the grace of god it had just made it out, it was wet and small and exhausted but alive. Today little Grace was put in the nest with mom and her siblings and she slide in under moms wing and all was good. I know they all have a long way to go but she was almost thrown away. Grace is my miracle chick.
