Project Help Needed!

[gjgarre]

Here is my plan. I have been incubating eggs and as interesting as it is, I would like to get chicks the natural way. My plan was to build another coop with an enclosed run and take 2 or 3 hens and a rooster of the same breed and keep them solely in that coop. I am hoping that nature will take its course and they will lay, hatch, and mother their babies with little human involvement. I will of course be providing food and water.

I have it my head that I want orpingtons, and found a person not far from me that has mature, laying, lavender orpingtons with a rooster for sale. The problem is she said they don't go broody.

So here are my two options.

1. Get the lavender orpingtons and put in with them a known broody bird such as a silkie, or hopefully you have a better breed in mind, and hope they sit on the orpington eggs.

2. Get a whole other breed of chicken, but obviously not going to be my first choice breed.

This is just for fun, if I start to get overrun with chicks i will start selling them or giving them away, but I've never witnessed nature in action like this and I think the kids would get a kick out of it. I have 15 other chickens and not one of them has gone broody for me.

Anybody have any input?

Thanks

 

[Judy]

A good broody will hatch whatever eggs are under her, and raise the chicks. They don't know they did not lay the eggs.