Old Fashioned Broody Hen Hatch A Long and Informational Thread

[Miss Lydia]

I was offered a trio of silkies this spring, but after thinking it through they wouldn't fit in here, we live in the mountains and our flock free ranges with our ducks and most of our chickens are game /bantam which seems to hold their own in our terrain. plus we do have Brahmas also which do well here. The only chicken I have that is kinda fru fru is my bantam frizzle, she can't fly or protect herself. but I love that little dickens, she has a pretty big attitude for being so tiny. Great mama still has her 2 chicks with her after 6 weeks.

I would not feel comfortable having silkies running loose here. but I think they are very pretty

Alexander did you ask your dad to candle those eggs, and he might hear peeps or see pips by now.

 

[Alexander]

I am thinking of starting with ducks.I love the cayuga ones.They are just so awesome.Are they hard to raise (off topic)

The hard thing is to find them because Greece sucks

No i didnt.If they want to hatch they will.But My father found one outside the nest.Probably was thrown away by the broody and he saked it a little bit and he thinks is dead because it sounded like you know the rotten ones?

Whatever,I was mistaken about day 22 though because day 22 started in the afternoon and not when i first typed it,that means 5-6 hours ago so i still have some chances.

 

[Miss Lydia]

I hope they hatch for you. he should have opened the egg up to see what was going on in it. As far as ducks I like cayugas too. I have Muscovies 8 of them, most are rescues, they are nice ducks too. quiet, but they do fly so I clip their wing in the fall after molt. They are friendly though and when my hen htaches her 3 eggs I am hoping for girls, but if we do get a drake then we will process our first duck. I have 2 drakes now and they would not tolerate another male. Maybe you can find a breeder of cayugas somewhere close to you.

 

[Alexander]

I will search for it.Also are the drakes aggressive towards other males suck as gobblers or roosters or not?

 

[Miss Lydia]

Yes Muscovies will fight to the death, we have had it happen. the only reason these 2 can live together is because the youngest runs from the older one who is alpha drake. He tried to challenge the alpha Drake in April when breeding season started and they got into some pretty nasty fights, but we were here to break them up and now the younger just stays away from alpha drake. Alpha drake is 8 years old now so don't know how much longer he'll be able to keep his title though. But he is still the ladies man

 

[Sudsy Chick]

I'm so sad

Our girls should be on lockdown - and one of them (the one that sat later) came out today. I looked at her eggs - and one of them was half open but dead fully formed chick. It looks as if the membrane was really tough - I can just see her beak but nothing else. It looks as if mom tried to help because the shell is missing on half the egg? They're not due until Tuesday. I'm trying to resist taking the eggs and giving them to our other girl who is also sitting and seems more motherly? I don't know...they're both first time mothers. And this is our first time hatching...and this egg was not one that I am concerned about. Please let the rest of the hatch go well!

 

[Miss Lydia]

dawng do you mean she got off the nest for good? or just to take a break? and sorry about the chick

 

[Sudsy Chick]

Miss Lydia - thanks for asking. The one I'm concerned about took an extra-long break and after 20 minutes and I finally shooed her back in (never had to do that before.) I am concerned she should not be off the nest that long at this late stage; which is my temptation to give her eggs to the other girl, and especially with her having a dead chick/hatchling? I'm really nervous...and yet don't want to fuss the girls too much.

On a good note - I heard chirping from under our first broody - and even saw one quick triangle in an egg. Not sure what else is going on as she is doing so well I don't want to upset her!

 

[NellaBean]

I screwed up by letting other hens add eggs to my nice barred cochin broody's nest. So I have had a really staggered hatch. 1 or 2 hatching every day. After the first couple days, the hen got fed up with sitting and smashed two eggs walking around. So I took all of the remaining eggs and stuck them under my bantam mottled cochin broody...which meant taking HER eggs and sticking them under my MEAN barred cochin hen, in addition to the 12+ eggs she already had.

I have been pulling out the chicks every day as they hatch under the mottled girl and giving them to the nice barred hen. We are up to 9 now and only 2 eggs left! Hopefully they will hatch tomorrow and I can return her original 5 eggs to her.

Here were 7 of the 9 with the barred cochin hen. There is another blue and another black out of the photo.

Chicks 1 to 5

Chicks 6, 7 and 8

chick 9

 

[hokankai]

So mama decided she was gonna take all 9 babies outside today. She kept trying to leave when only half were out of the coop! Once they really started peeping loud she went back and made sure she had all of them. She scratched around with them and then decided to go dust bathe...problem is she gets transfixed when she dust bathes and when the babies started to get cold...she just kept dust bathing and clucking at them

. I had to pull her out by her tail to snap her out of it, and then decided to put her back and then picked up the chicks 3 at a time and placed them back in the coop. They were getting cold and ran right underneath her in their pen. I think I'm going to wait before letting them out of the coop/run again...

It also seems like the other hens don't mind the chicks at all. She had one incident with Rosie, our bratty GLW where she slowly got close and pecked one chick, but mama turned around and instantly flogged her real good and sent her running. The other hens just looked at them and tried to get at what mama was scratching up for them to eat...but generally left them alone. In the coop there have been no problems that I know of, and the pen has been opened for a couple days now so that mama and babies can roam the coop.

So hooray! Success so far!