I am so excited! We are doing something here on our little wanna be farm that we haven't done before. We have our first broody hen. She has been pretty serious about it for a few weeks now. She rarely ever comes out of the coop and when she does she doesn't stay out more than 10 or so minutes at a time. Whenever eggs are collected she has to be lifted up before you can get them and she was putting all of the eggs under her too lol. So Chris had to clean the coop and change the bedding yesterday and I thought well heck why not? So I got a dozen eggs for her to lay on. I picked a mix of all the different eggs so she is laying on hers and the other hen's eggs too.
While we don't have a rooster ourselves, we are lucky enough that our neighbor's roo loves to hang with our ladies all the time. He makes sure to get the job done daily too. He is an Easter Egger roo and our ladies are 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 Golden Comet, and 4 New Hampshire Reds. They will be mixed breeds but 50% of the females born should have the blue egg gene right? That will be awesome since we lost Smurfette soon after she started laying. But if we can replace our own layers with their offspring, hatched and raised by them, that saves us a lot of money on buying chicks, brooder set ups, and all the work of keeping chicks in brooders.
The hatch day should be either June 2nd or 3rd. I am hoping she is as good a mom as I think she will be. Today is day 3 and she is still sitting strong!! I also hope the majority of the eggs hold out and hatch well. We figure if we get too many roos them we will just have to grow them out and learn to process them for the freezer ourselves. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
While we don't have a rooster ourselves, we are lucky enough that our neighbor's roo loves to hang with our ladies all the time. He makes sure to get the job done daily too. He is an Easter Egger roo and our ladies are 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 Golden Comet, and 4 New Hampshire Reds. They will be mixed breeds but 50% of the females born should have the blue egg gene right? That will be awesome since we lost Smurfette soon after she started laying. But if we can replace our own layers with their offspring, hatched and raised by them, that saves us a lot of money on buying chicks, brooder set ups, and all the work of keeping chicks in brooders.
The hatch day should be either June 2nd or 3rd. I am hoping she is as good a mom as I think she will be. Today is day 3 and she is still sitting strong!! I also hope the majority of the eggs hold out and hatch well. We figure if we get too many roos them we will just have to grow them out and learn to process them for the freezer ourselves. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Last edited: