My mille fleur's who I've let lay and set at will have never successfully hatched out chicks. I go and check on them today as they have been setting and I find one chick had started to zip out and died. Mama was on the other side of the coop and had abandoned the rest of the eggs because she had one successfully hatch. So, of the remaining eggs a couple are peeping and one had started to zip. That was over 5 hours ago. She has cracked a bit more of the shell and I have her and the hatched chick under the lights and away from bad mama but now what? I went through a horrible time last year with two chicks that mama had crushed and were shrink-wrapped (from another coop) and after hours with a wet towel and heat helped them from their shells and they went on to be a beautiful hen and roo. I don't want to intervene if she'll do it on her own, but by the same token I don't want her to die in the shell because she under a lamp, not in a bator and away for bad mama.
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?