Please Help not sure what to do!!

[JGreifzu]

we have two hens and recently determined we had 7.....yes 7 roos. our females are great layers. not a clue as to what kind of chickens they are but they lay about an egg a day. we were out of town for the weekend and our friends forgot to collect the eggs and our one female was very broody. since we had recently discovered we had roos and there was a possibility of hatching some chicks we left her alone with her eggs. the other female continued to lay in the nest with her and now we have two broody hens and a lot of eggs. we have since removed 6 roos. its been about 3 weeks now. what do we do? we tried to candle the eggs but they are so dense i cant see anything. my females wont come out of the coop. i dont want to let this continue if they're not fertile. please help! email me with any advice or links! i'd greatly appreciate any help.

 

[Farm Frenzy]

About how long do you guess they've been sitting? If you can't see through them, it's probably because they are full of baby!!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

if you cant say for sure when they sat down i'd count 21 days from when you got home. remember also that today is the solstice so it might be today/tomorrow!

give them a couple more days.

 

[JGreifzu]

I think it was approx three weeks on Friday the 19th give or take a few days. the first broody female wont move off her nest. i put food & water closer to her since i was worried she isnt eating. the other female takes a break for a few minutes occasionaly but less so as the days go on. my husband and i were just worried that handling the eggs would be bad for them. and i'm a bit impatient so i wanted to make sure we were not waisting our time and breakfast.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

i'd still give it a couple of days.. sometimes they dont 'lock down' for the first couple of days.....

also - its not wildly unusual for them NOT to eat. one of my hens didnt get up the entire time - they should look like they are in 'the zone' and kind of zombie like.. which is fine. each hen is different some get up - some dont budge. but you should alwyas make sure they have fresh food and water in easy reach.

the risk is that the 'set' is very hard on them but as soon as you have a hatch they'll get back to normal very fast

the other thing is - you might not have anything to loose to let them set a few more days. after a hen hatches she may not start laying for a while - sometimes a couple of months. so might as well just let them be.

 

[mxpres]

If you had 2 hens and 7 roos in the same pen together,I would think the eggs would be fertile,21 days is the magic number of days to wait,,3/4 more days won,t be too long,

 

[JGreifzu]

Thank you everyone. All we needed was a bit of patience. we found two new babies today. Hopefully the rest will hatch soon. Everyone seems to be doing quite well. Should I remove the babies since there are about 15 more eggs still or just leave them? my husband put chick feed in and they ate and drank well.

 

[crtrlovr]

since you didn't mark them when you discovered the hen was broody, you won't know which ones are the "nearly ready" and which ones were laid afterward. Mark all the ones in the nest with a sharpie pen or something like that NOW, and after you're sure the ones from the first batch have hatched, remove & discard the others, and the next time somebody turns broody, mark the eggs and that way you can remove the freshly laid ones. (Thanks for that handy tip, Mom!

)

 

[crtrlovr]

Quote:
forgot to add, CONGRATS ON YOUR NEW BABIES!!!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

Quote:
yay!!!! so glad this worked out!!

and yes leave them be with momma - give the others another day or day/half to hatch. the momma will know if she is in over her head with live babies vs eggs.. that is.. she will know if they are going to hatch or not. also she might be to the point where she needs to focus on the babies and not the eggs.

the best advice i ever heard was from Harvey Ussery (themodernhomestead) which was... 'that little hen is a lot smarter than you think'

she'll figure it out. and dont feel bad if you only get a few babies. they will be the most fun you'll have all summer



ps thanks for the follow up - i was wondering what happened