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I've candled them, and with the black cochin I watched one hatch one evening, then in the morning I went out to find blood splatters all over the broody pen and her munching down on some body parts!!! I saved the next one, and fired her from hatching again... she's sitting on some random eggs now, because i can't stop her!
Now I see what your talking about, I thought you meant the egg was still intact, your saying chick already hatched. Well that I can comment on, One of my broodys sat on 2 eggs and the brood went with out any problems other than being very hot, she got out at least once a day, but was game hen and very high strung, well eggs hatched 2 days before suppose to, we came home from Church and I go to check and find a chick mutalated by this mama hen, take it away not being able to tell if something might have been wrong with it, left the other one under her, go back in about 3 hrs. and the other chick has hatched and she has started in on it, so I snatch it up and bring it in, it really doesn't look like mature chick, but I try for almost 1 week to help this little thing survive, finally it dies. It wasn't right from the first and I believe she killed the first one because of the same. I had never had this happen before so I reacted before thinking. I should have just let mama handle it. So saying all of that, I wonder if your mama was reacting to the chick not being right and she was taking care of it, you know in the wild they have to do this to keep predators away from the healthy ones. I don't know but it is a possibility. Sorry you had to go through that, It is not pleasant for sure.
