Old Fashioned Broody Hen Hatch A Long and Informational Thread

[little]

 

[ChickyChickens]

Cute! Silkies are the best mothers, well at least I think soo!
One of my one Silkies once got killed 'cause she was protecting her babies from a dog!

 

[Sydney Acres]

I checked on broody this morning and things have taken a scary turn. I need advice.

The egg with the hole in from last night was gone completely shell and all, there was blood in the shavings, and all that was left was a single chick foot.

I see two possibilities:

1. The egg got punctured accidentally at some point and the chick was dead inside, would explain why I didn't hear any cheeping. The broody ate it to keep the nest clean.

2. Homicidal broody.

Its day 19, I have an incubator running but the eggs in it are at day 13. Should I transfer the eggs and lock down? Wait and see?

I agree, probably option #1, but definitely need close monitoring. A friend of mine came home to one of her Lavender Orpingtons choking on a live chick once!

The only thing that seems strange to me is that a single chick foot was left. I hate to get graphic (meaning please stop reading here if you're squeamish), but was it just the foot or the whole leg? The foot seems like a strange place to disarticulate if a hen is pulling apart a chick to make the parts small enough to eat without choking. But if a rat got into the nest and slowly ate the egg and chick, it might leave a foot behind. You would think that the hen would go crazy, but maybe not if her hormones were balanced just right and the rat didn't move around enough to disturb her. It might have eaten as much as it could, and carried off anything that it couldn't eat.

I'm only thinking this because I saw some juvenile rats in my barn last week, and that exact scenario came to mind. I had built my broody run to withstand raccoons, opossums, stray cats, and owls, but didn't think of rats, since I have cats and hadn't seen any rats in my barn. Not until I started leaving food out for the broody that is! When I saw three rats inside her run eating her food (at 11 pm when I went out to check on her), I immediately made a bottomless cage out of 1/2 inch hardware cloth to drop over her and picked up her food. The next day I covered her entire run with hardware cloth, set out 6 rat traps inside large under-bed storage totes with access holes drilled in them, and put a teaspoon of chicken food underneath each "perch" where my barn cats like to sit up high and monitor the world. (The tote-trapping method is an invention of my friend Denise. A long under-bed tote is used, preferably one that isn't clear but those are hard to find. A 2" access hole is drilled in the side of the tote. It should be at ground level, midway along the long length. A second hole should be drilled immediately across from it on the opposite length. The traps should be put inside, along the wall of the shorter width of the totes, one trap on each end. A few pieces (less than 1/2-1 teaspoon total) of food should be sprinkled within the tote as a lure, and the lid should be put on tight, then a brick or other weight should be put on the lid. This prevents cats, dogs or adult chickens from being injured by the traps -- the rats can go into the totes, feel safe because they can see an easy exit directly across from the entrance, but the cats, dogs and chickens can't reach the traps, even if they stick their paws or head through the access holes, and the weight on top prevents the pets from moving the totes around enough that the traps could slide within reach. With baby chicks around that could fit through the access holes, the totes have to be placed in areas where the chicks can't get to them.) Well, the first day I only caught one rat in the traps, and the cat left two dead rats for me to see in front of the barn, but she seemed kind of large in the belly and not that hungry, so she probably caught more. The second day all the traps were full, and the cat was stuffed. I mean, she looked pregnant and didn't eat any of her cat food. The third day she may have caught a few more because she only ate about half her normal meal, but the traps were empty. And there's been nothing at all since then. Not a single rat dropping, nothing in the traps, and the cat's hungry enough to eat the chicken food lure that I've left out. Whew, that was close!! Fifteen or twenty young rats can turn into thousands in no time! But now broody plus 13 chicks live in a fortress, built to last forever and keep out everything.

 

[TheGeekySheep]

Wow! I'm glad I've never had to deal with rats, I have a great barn cat. I've only ever seen one mouse while I was out mowing.

Anyway, it definitely wasn't a rat. My broody is in a hardware cloth cage by herself to keep the other hens from trying to "join" her brooding party and upsetting her. And no evidence of digging.

 

[Sydney Acres]

Oh and as far as merging the two clutches in the bator, I would not recommend it. The day 19 eggs have different needs from the day 13 eggs regarding humidity levels. You're better off leaving the chicks to the mom or getting a separate brooding area set up for the new,y hatched chicks.

Oh yes, forgot about that detail. Learned that the hard way. Next year I'm buying a separate hatcher for staggered incubator hatches. May never use it, but don't want to go through this again.

My current incubator eggs were on days 11-14 of their incubation while I had earlier eggs hatching in the same incubator, so I raised the humidity to 65% for the hatch, assuming that I could bring the humidity down quite low afterwards to make up for it (which may or may not be true -- clearly I didn't preplan this properly). Well, we had a huge rainstorm plus nice temperatures right after the hatch, so the ambient humidity stayed around 70%, and the incubator couldn't get its humidity below 30-35%. So now I've got three eggs in the incubator on day 19 with air sacs a week behind normal, and the eggs have only lost 8% of their weight instead of the usual 11-13% by this time. The embryos are moving, but there's lots of water visible around the embryos. I've stopped the egg turner, and have set the eggs upright so that if a chick pips internally and keeps its mouth in the airsac, then hopefully the airsac won't flood and drown the chick. I've also left the humidity low to hopefully evaporate more water from the egg before it pips, and hope that the extra water in the egg will be enough lubrication to allow the chick to rotate and zip, even though the incubator humidity won't be as high as recommended for hatching. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I don't hold out much hope for these three chicks, as there's a lot of water visible in these eggs. I've thought of draining it with a needle and syringe, and it might work, but there's just too many things that could go wrong there. Has anyone ever tried that?

Sorry, not really broody thread topics.

 

[bobbieschicks]

Oh yes, forgot about that detail.  Learned that the hard way.  Next year I'm buying a separate hatcher for staggered incubator hatches.  May never use it, but don't want to go through this again. 

My current incubator eggs were on days 11-14 of their incubation while I had earlier eggs hatching in the same incubator, so I raised the humidity to 65% for the hatch, assuming that I could bring the humidity down quite low afterwards to make up for it (which may or may not be true -- clearly I didn't preplan this properly).  Well, we had a huge rainstorm plus nice temperatures right after the hatch, so the ambient humidity stayed around 70%, and the incubator couldn't get its humidity below 30-35%.  So now I've got three eggs in the incubator on day 19 with air sacs a week behind normal, and the eggs have only lost 8% of their weight instead of the usual 11-13% by this time.  The embryos are moving, but there's lots of water visible around the embryos.  I've stopped the egg turner, and have set the eggs upright so that if a chick pips internally and keeps its mouth in the airsac, then hopefully the airsac won't flood and drown the chick.  I've also left the humidity low to hopefully evaporate more water from the egg before it pips, and hope that the extra water in the egg will be enough lubrication to allow the chick to rotate and zip, even though the incubator humidity won't be as high as recommended for hatching.  Does anyone have any other suggestions?  I don't hold out much hope for these three chicks, as there's a lot of water visible in these eggs.  I've thought of draining it with a needle and syringe, and it might work, but there's just too many things that could go wrong there.  Has anyone ever tried that?

Sorry, not really broody thread topics.

I've not a tried messing with the internal portions of the egg in the bator, but perhaps you could do a search to see if there's info on it. My experiences with the bator have been mixed and that's one reason I prefer to let the broodies do the work now. They seem to manage heat and humidity way better than I can.

 

[bobbieschicks]

AWHHHHH! Adorable!

 

[ChickyChickens]

AWHHHHH! Adorable!

X2

 

[Sydney Acres]

Wow! I'm glad I've never had to deal with rats, I have a great barn cat. I've only ever seen one mouse while I was out mowing.

Anyway, it definitely wasn't a rat. My broody is in a hardware cloth cage by herself to keep the other hens from trying to "join" her brooding party and upsetting her. And no evidence of digging.

Well, anything that was small enough to get through hardware cloth would be too wide to leave after eating a chick, so that means it could only have been the hen.

Hardware cloth is just the greatest against predators, especially when placed over welded wire for strength. I was calling around to different feed and lumber stores to get pricing one day and found a place that would sell me 100 foot rolls at only 60% of the next cheapest price. I couldn't believe it and actually went down to the store to make sure it wasn't some cheaply made junk. It was the real thing. The feed store owner had a huge semi truck and four times a year he drove directly to the distributor to pick up all his wire products at once, so he got them at a great price because of the volume discounts plus no shipping charges. There's very few things that I'm willing to put on a credit card if I can't pay it off at the end of the month, but this was a rare opportunity. He was driving to the distributor the next day, and I asked him to pick up 10 rolls for me. It's amazing how many things I use it for, and now I've got a great relationship with a feed store owner who will special order me anything.

 

[TheGeekySheep]

Well, anything that was small enough to get through hardware cloth would be too wide to leave after eating a chick, so that means it could only have been the hen.

As dark as the situation is that really made me laugh.