Mom Off Eggs for 8 hours: Will they Survive?

Barry Natchitoches

Songster
11 Years
Joined
Sep 4, 2008
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Last night my back yard flooded. Too much rain for too long.

The other chickens were OK, because they could sleep on their roost.

But my broody's nest was soon to flood, so at 2 am this morning, my wife and I went out in the henhouse to make an unplanned move.

My broody has been sitting for close to three weeks now. In fact, when I went to moving the eggs from the nest she had been living in (which is nailed to the wall) to a portable nest, I felt one that was cracked.

But when I moved her last night, she didn't find her way to the eggs for eight hours.

She IS on the nest protecting them now, but for eight hours, she was not on them.

It was 80 degrees inside the house.

Are the emerging chick fetuses in the egg viable after 8 hours without Momma's protection.
 
you never know, it depends, I had 3 hens sitting, some of the eggs hatched, there where 8 chicks, at night they went back to the nest with the chicks and now there are 10 chicks, my DH went to clean up the nest and found a new hatchling the hens had been off the nest durning the day for 3 days and this one still hatched with them on only at night, so there is hope
 

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