- Sep 12, 2012
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Does she sit on the eggs and chicks at least 23 hours of the day, or does she only sit on them at night?
If she's already teaching them to eat and drink, it sounds like she has already given up on hatching the other eggs. If she takes the chicks out to forage, then she's not actually sitting on the eggs anymore, only when she sits on the chicks at night to keep t hem warm.
If she's actually sitting on them and not leaving the nest except about once a day for a very short while, then she's giving the other eggs a little more time to hatch.
There will come a time when she leaves the rest of the eggs though. Especially with babies to be taken care of. You should be prepared to CANDLE and/or incubate all remaining eggs, if you don't want to kill anything. Fifteen eggs sounds like SOMEONE was still laying eggs while she was trying to incubate the others, and you probably just don't know which is which. If that's the case, they could be at all different stages of development, and it's probably best to just incubate all of them now and see which ones hatch.
As for moving the chicks into a warm area, I'd worry less about that, and more about the remaining eggs that COULD still hatch. Mommy will keep the chicks warm enough, and raise them just fine. The chicks that hatched for her will probably have no problem at all being cared for by her. She'll make sure they are comfy. It's just the remaining eggs that she'll want to abandon when she realizes they didn't hatch during her time frame.
If she's already teaching them to eat and drink, it sounds like she has already given up on hatching the other eggs. If she takes the chicks out to forage, then she's not actually sitting on the eggs anymore, only when she sits on the chicks at night to keep t hem warm.
If she's actually sitting on them and not leaving the nest except about once a day for a very short while, then she's giving the other eggs a little more time to hatch.
There will come a time when she leaves the rest of the eggs though. Especially with babies to be taken care of. You should be prepared to CANDLE and/or incubate all remaining eggs, if you don't want to kill anything. Fifteen eggs sounds like SOMEONE was still laying eggs while she was trying to incubate the others, and you probably just don't know which is which. If that's the case, they could be at all different stages of development, and it's probably best to just incubate all of them now and see which ones hatch.
As for moving the chicks into a warm area, I'd worry less about that, and more about the remaining eggs that COULD still hatch. Mommy will keep the chicks warm enough, and raise them just fine. The chicks that hatched for her will probably have no problem at all being cared for by her. She'll make sure they are comfy. It's just the remaining eggs that she'll want to abandon when she realizes they didn't hatch during her time frame.
