Just a word of caution....watch her closely when they start to hatch. We did the same thing with a first time broody...bought hatching eggs. She did great until they started hatching and then she killed them! We were able to save 2 and get them in a brooder before she killed them too. Not sure what she was thinking....I think she saw the new chicks as intruders and was trying to protect her eggs.
I did what you are doing. I also had six hens. I put fertile eggs under my broody hen. I kept her integrated. She was one of my meek chickens; but, I have to say, my hens have never been aggressive toward each other. My only problem was she decided to go broody in the favorite nest box, so the first day or so the other chickens kept trying to crowd in the box with her and a couple of eggs got broken. I moved her to another box and put a short curtain in front of the opening to give her some privacy. This took care of the problem. Other than that, I made no other changes. Once the chicks hatched, she became very protective of them. I was surprised with this behavior based on how timid she was prior to becoming a mama. I saw no signs of aggression by the other hens toward the chicks. In fact, they seemed to simply ignore them. The hen kept her chicks and herself separated from the rest of the group until the chicks were almost as big as her. Then, literally, one day, she simply walked away from them and went back to the flock. She never interacted with the chicks again.
Awesome info thank you! I hope this goes that well. I am sorry about your lost chicks
Oh goodness. Thank you for the tip. I will be on the lookout
I have 2 broody hens, one is a black maran and one is a Russian Orloff. we ordered more Orloff eggs for them to sit on, they started hatching on 6/19/2020- one so far and today it moved in the house to a heat lamp as the Orloff hen kept letting it out of the nest and in Wyoming, our mornings are still cool. I have 7 more to hatch hopefully! My other 8 hens are evil and I feared one of them would hurt the little. Hopefully when it gets bigger I will try introducing it back to them so I wish you and your clan great happy success.
You don't have to build anything. Get one of those inexpensive wire dog crates--bigger than small... smaller than huge. (I bought a small one for hospital lodging at Walmart.) You can make some kind of privacy covering if you need to, but don't make it stuffy esp as it's summer.
That’s a cute little coop! Since this is the only time I’m ever planning on doing this I am not planning to build. I have a dog crate but unfortunately we have mink. So they can get into anything like that. I’m thinking if we have issues to wrap the crate in hardware cloth.
