Mother hen throwing babies out :(

[lazy gardener]

Agreed with above post by PD. Part of animal husbandry is making the decisions for the animals, including if and when, and how they are allowed to reproduce. As for next time, OP has had a lesson from school of hard knocks, and I'm sure the next time will go much smoother: Controlled clutch size, perhaps even giving broody her own small area so other hens can't enter her nest. Sometimes ensuing battles over nest and eggs can result in broken eggs. Marked eggs, all set at the same time. Until you set eggs, you can give her golf balls to see if she will stick to the nest. Don't set eggs till she's stuck tight day and night for 2 - 3 days.

Before setting eggs next time, I suggest that you have an incubator on stand by, running and at the correct temp. Read all of "hatching eggs 101" in the learning center before setting any eggs, either in the incubator or under a broody hen. If you become familiar with candling procedure and embryonic development, you could cull an improssibly large clutch of eggs by eliminating any late to the game or dead eggs early on. Or you could take 20 eggs away from her, and incubate them in the house, and leave her with a manageable sized clutch. An incubator can be made for about $20, using easily scavenged materials, and a thermostat.

 

[Therliana]

Thanks PD and Lazy Gardener, We gave our boys to a friend who has chickens, so they've got a great home now and some acreage to roam on as well so any new hatches will well and truly be controlled as we'll have to physically get the fertile eggs ourselves

If Bella goes broody from now on we'll do our best to break her out of it, if that is at all not possible we'll look at getting half dozen fertile eggs and putting under her. Thanks to this mishap we now have a brooder box if we were to ever let her have more babies we'd have that prepared and I have an incubator on it's way in case I need it for the babies she's still sitting on so will also have that as well. So any future hatches will be controlled, planned, more organised and better prepared but definitely not in any hurry to do so

As for her hoarding anymore eggs, once we realised what she was doing we isolated her quick smart !!! Doesn't stop her from trying to be creative in trying to get out and get them, We have now put an old front loading washing machine in the pen with it's back to her so she can't see there's eggs in it but her motherly senses know better (the fact the other hens announce an eggs arrival certainly isn't helping our cause either lol)

 

[chickengeorgeto]

..... my biggest worry is, did the Mumma Hen kick this baby out because we've taken her other babies off her? ..... 1 Live Baby, 1 Dead Baby
Thursday: 9 Live Babies, 2 Dead Babies
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: Nothing
Sunday: Nothing
Monday: 1 Dead Baby.

Here is a good example of why staggered hatches are a bad idea.

First your hen bonded with the chicks hatched earlier but for one reason or another the hen was not able to, or else she was unwilling to leave the nest to begin squiring her babies around the barn yard.

At any rate your hen bonded or IMPRINTED on the first chicks that hatched and now she like almost all hens is trying to protect her clutch from strange chicks. Everyone should take this lesson to heart. Hens are not machines who are intended to hatch baby chicks for weeks on end like a mechanical incubator. But rather hens' bodies are controlled by hormones but never by emotions and especially not by that human of all processes, LOGIC..

In a hens' life there is a time for laying, a time for sitting, a time for hatching, a time for brooding, and even a time to kick her children out and turn her back on them. Hens march to a different drummer, a chicken drummer, and nothing else.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

A 6 months old pullet is too young to be laying eggs with all the resources and vitamins in them that will result in live, strong, and viable chicks.

Hoarding is something we hear about from "reality" TV. Hens don't hoard eggs, they only go broody on the eggs thay the chicken husbandry person leaves behind.

At any rate coops are as foreign to the Ethos of chickens as a phone booth for a house is foreign to a human family. In a true "free range" setting each and every hen will seek and search out her very own nest site into witch she will deposit a clutch (usually 12 to 18) eggs.

 

[centrarchid]

Thanks PD and Lazy Gardener, We gave our boys to a friend who has chickens, so they've got a great home now and some acreage to roam on as well so any new hatches will well and truly be controlled as we'll have to physically get the fertile eggs ourselves

If Bella goes broody from now on we'll do our best to break her out of it, if that is at all not possible we'll look at getting half dozen fertile eggs and putting under her. Thanks to this mishap we now have a brooder box if we were to ever let her have more babies we'd have that prepared and I have an incubator on it's way in case I need it for the babies she's still sitting on so will also have that as well. So any future hatches will be controlled, planned, more organised and better prepared but definitely not in any hurry to do so

As for her hoarding anymore eggs, once we realised what she was doing we isolated her quick smart !!! Doesn't stop her from trying to be creative in trying to get out and get them, We have now put an old front loading washing machine in the pen with it's back to her so she can't see there's eggs in it but her motherly senses know better (the fact the other hens announce an eggs arrival certainly isn't helping our cause either lol)

Some things I do to prevent problem you had is disperse nesting sites providing more options. That approach works well in setting like a barn or where hens nest in field. When confined, you can also make so fewer hens in a given group. With my 10 x 10 dog kennels, having more than three hens greatly increases odds of having multiple clutches in the same nest. Once in while even two hens will do it although those debacles you can correct by removing all but brooding hen. That last scenario provides challenge of monster broods which for me are a pain in the butt unless nutrition all coming from feed.