Preparing for hatching with a broody hen

[DonyaQuick]

Got Dimple moved in the box near dusk, so far so good. Also I will not be doing the 40F storage thing since I looked up the article I was remembering reading and have been reminded that the pullet percentage is a grand 54% vs 50%. That won't make any notable difference for me with just 6 eggs. So, I'll use the newest eggs I've got once I'm confident Dimple isn't going to abandon ship. My rooster plan was bachelor flock to grow them out anyway.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Here is broody little Dimple this morning - happy to eat treats from my hand but clearly not going anywhere. She likes her new box now and is happy to sit while I work on my computer nearby. I'm going to let my other girls do their round of laying this morning and then get some real eggs under her.

Also, a happy side note that will hopefully benefit my flock expansion down the line: there's an old shed on my property near where I put my coop. It looked like it had been used for tool storage and as a small workshop when my husband and I moved in, so he initially used it for tool storage, but the structure inside always seemed really weird and I kept wondering why it was built with coop-style ventilation. Well, we found an old pop door that had been covered up! Neighbors confirmed there used to be a lot of chickens on the property so I guess that was the coop. It will take some non-trivial repair, but with the price of things being what they are it is definitely worth doing that rather than tearing it down or trying to buy/build new structures. It will be a challenge and it will probably take some time, but we want to try rehabilitating that shed back to being a functional coop.

 

[thebestcasey]

If you are going to let a hen sit and hatch then let her get on with it.
Don't touch the eggs.
Don't candle them.
Don't worry about an incubator. The hen hatches what she hatches and that's it.
No there is no minimum. More is better up to a point. 6 is a good number I've found. If all six hatch mum will be busy but not a wreck. If less hatch right down to one, mum will be pleased and so should you be.
Making her a safe place to sit and hatch is important. Make sure she can come and go at will. She needs to get off the nest every day to poop, eat and dustbath.
The hen knows best. Don't interfere more tha is absolutely necessary.

♡ This. We literally gave our broody some eggs and let her be. I do have a question for you though. Will the broody get rid of quitters and non fertile eggs? When I checked on my broody today, there was a cracked open eggshell near her breast. Did she accidently crush it and eat it? Ive taken a zero intervention method so Ive never candled the eggs she was given and I know she stole some non fertile eggs as the other hen she shares her nest box with still lays 1-2 eggs per day.

 

[DonyaQuick]

When I checked on my broody today, there was a cracked open eggshell near her breast. Did she accidently crush it and eat it?

Do other hens have direct access? Might not have been the broody who damaged it. One of the reasons I moved mine is I worried about a larger hen who wasn't keen on the broodiness trying to push her way in to lay in the broody box and potentially smashing things.

 

[thebestcasey]

Do other hens have direct access? Might not have been the broody who damaged it. One of the reasons I moved mine is I worried about a larger hen who wasn't keen on the broodiness trying to push her way in to lay in the broody box and potentially smashing things.

I only have 1 other hen with access and the nesting box is spacious enough for 2 hens to lay comfortably inside without interfering with each other.
The other hen lays her eggs on one side and the broody barely leave her clutch. My coop is the Omlet Eglu Cube and I only have the 2 at the moment (Black Sex Link and Black Copper Maran) the hens have got along very well and have been raised together.
Im wondering if the egg was a quitter and she ate it?

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

Got Dimple moved in the box near dusk, so far so good. Also I will not be doing the 40F storage thing since I looked up the article I was remembering reading and have been reminded that the pullet percentage is a grand 54% vs 50%. That won't make any notable difference for me with just 6 eggs. So, I'll use the newest eggs I've got once I'm confident Dimple isn't going to abandon ship. My rooster plan was bachelor flock to grow them out anyway.

I'm not convinced the 40F storage thing works. My first hatch I had 3 hens go broody together and I didn't collect enough eggs so I just pulled 3 from the fridge that had been refrigerated for 1-2 days and all 3 hatched and 2 appear to be boys, they're dark brahma mixes. I had 2 roosters at that time so Idk if the speckled sussex or the gold laced Wyandotte fathered them but I suspect there is one of each but they are already chest bumping each other at 6 weeks old and I've never seen the girls act like that. Is there a minimum amount of time your supposed to 40F store them for better results?

 

[DonyaQuick]

I suspect there is one of each but they are already chest bumping each other at 6 weeks old and I've never seen the girls act like that.

I had several chest bumpers at that age among my original 6 buff orpingtons. They all turned out to be hens. Two of them I would let out later on and they'd go charging around the coop after each other and do these riddiculous 2ft in the air flying chest bumps that made me think they were going to injure themselves, but they were just being bonkers and full of energy.

Is there a minimum amount of time your supposed to 40F store them for better results?

This is the article:
https://www.publish.csiro.au/cp/AR9600664
Abstract:
"Fertile White Leghorn eggs were stored for periods ranging from 24 hr to 7 days in environments controlled at 40, 60, or 80°F and 70 per cent. relative humidity. The eggs were then incubated, and observations on numbers of incubator clears and dead embryos at 10 days and again at 17 days, numbers of chickens hatched, weight at hatching, sex ratio, weight of pullets at 14 days of age, and mortalities were recorded. Eggs stored at 40 and 60°F showed no effect of age of egg on number of clears, dead embryos, or number of chickens hatched. Eggs stored at 80°F showed a rapid fall in number of chickens hatched with age of egg before incubation, this effect being produced by increases in number of clears and dead embryos. Storage at 40°F produced a lower number of chickens hatched than at 60°F, owing to a higher number of incubator clears. There was no difference in sex ratio between chickens hatched from eggs stored at 60 and 80°F, neither departing significantly from 50 per cent. pullets. However, storage at 40°F produced significantly more pullets than cockerels, 54.6 per cent. of the chickens being pullets. Storage temperature and age of egg did not affect the hatching weight of the chickens, but when 14 days old, pullets from the eggs stored at 80°F were significantly heavier than pullets from the other groups."

So that is the one where the 54% (or I guess more like 55%) number I quoted is from. Nothing in the abstract at least says anything about the optimum storage time within the 24h-7d range. I don't have access to the full article but my interpretation from the abstract is that the storage temperature was the main factor rather than the time.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I should add one thing onto that last post - this is why I didn't do the 40F thing. I did the math for 6 eggs with the 50 vs 54% difference and have also don it for 3 below. Values are rounded to the nearest 10th of a percent.

Likelihood of n pullets from 3 eggs using 50% vs. 54% chance of each egg being a pullet

n	50% chance pullet per egg	54% chance pullet per egg
3	12.5%	15.7%
2	37.5%	40.2%
1	37.5%	34.3%
0	12.5%	9.7%

Likelihood of n pullets from 6 eggs using 50% vs. 54% chance of each egg being a pullet

n	50% chance pullet per egg	54% chance pullet per egg
6	1.6%	2.5%
5	9.4%	12.7%
4	23.4%	27.0%
3	31.3%	30.7%
2	23.4%	19.6%
1	9.4%	6.7%
0	1.6%	0.9%

You can see it doesn't change much to have a 54% chance vs a 50% one. The most likely outcomes are still 1-2 roosters in the 3 egg case and 2-4 roosters in the 6 egg case. So, assuming the numbers from that Australian study are valid, then the only way you would see any notable difference from the 40F method even if done perfectly is to do it on a very large scale (hundreds of eggs).

EDIT: should someone find this post out of context later, I realize I should have stated that the numbers in the right columns are based on having n fertile eggs that already survived a stay in the fridge, thereby in theory having the 54% pullet chance per egg since the rooster eggs would have an 8% chance of dying in the fridge (above whatever the baseline rate of fertility loss would be for all eggs).