Hello, have read maybe half of the pages of this thread, got a lot of good info. I have a Silver Sebright sitting on 4 hatching eggs right now that I got from a fellow BYC'er, it's day 16 today. Pretty sure one of the eggs is a dud but the other 3 look good. I suppose I will force myself to remove the failed egg today. I know it's nothing but trouble to leave it there if it's no good, but I keep hoping I'm wrong since I've never done this before. But it looks empty when candled and much different than the other eggs. Got to face reality sometime, I suppose.
Edna, my broody, is in a wire dog crate inside the main coop. She's been going broody very regularly as long as she's been laying, and she's two years old now, so I finally broke down and got her a few eggs (no rooster here so our own eggs were not going to do the trick!). Whenever she went broody before, she would randomly choose which nest box to go back to after taking her little "coffee breaks" so when I got her the hatching eggs I knew she had to be confined. She will get up to eat and drink a little in the crate, but won't poo in there (it's fairly large, maybe 3-1/2 by 2-1/2 feet). When I first put her in there I just let her be for a couple days but when there were no huge broody poops at all, I started taking her out for 15 minutes once a day to stretch and do her business.
So I know this question has been discussed at length--do you continue to take them off the eggs the last three days or so? If she was on a regular nest box in the coop, I'd let her make up her own mind. But since she has decided the crate is too small to poop in, is it safe to take her off for just a few minutes? I guess what I'm asking is in the normal run of things, does a broody get off the nest those last few days or does she stick tight and "hold it" till the chicks hatch? What have people observed with their own hens? Or should I just assume that if she gets too desperate, she will go in the crate? Thanks for your help.