Smashed egg in nest

[Sylviaanne]

My hen is sitting on a nest of eggs and I had to run her off to get the eggs from the nest next to her. While she was up, I took the chicken eggs out of her nest and found that there is a smashed egg at the bottom of her nest and the mess is on some of the eggs. I am afraid that if I try to move her, she won't sit again.

What do I do?

 

[Amiga]

I feel that the risk of infection all around is greater than the risk of her abandoning the nest, and I would borrow or buy an incubator, or find someone willing to use theirs, if she does abandon.

 

[Sylviaanne]

I have an empty incubator but how do I move her?

Just pick the eggs up and put them where I need to put them and hope she will sit on them?
If she won't sit on them, how long do I wait to move them into the incubator?

 

[Amiga]

I may not be picturing the scene right, but I would lure her off with treats if possible, or maybe wait just a little while and hope she gets up for a drink or something, and move the eggs, clean up the nest, and rebuild the nest if at all possible.

Then see if she will sit back down in the same place with the cleaned up eggs and nest. I would be really cautious cleaning off the eggs, but I would try to wipe them off as well as possible. Some folks here may have some better tips on how.

 

[HollyDuckFarmer]

Just wait til she leaves the nest for her daily poo, then go in very quickly and remove the busted egg, plus any yucky bedding. ( what are you using for bedding btw ?) I would just take a little trash or compost bag along, do it very quickly! I would not worry too much about the good eggs-- you don't want to wipe on the good eggs too much bcz you could accidentally remove the bloom which would allow bacteria to enter inside the shell. Maybe very gently wipe with a scampish paper towel if it's really nasty.

 

[HollyDuckFarmer]

Dampish.
Not scampish.

 

[Amiga]

I was trying to figure out how to make a paper towel scampish.

Thanks, HollyDuckFarmer!

 

[HollyDuckFarmer]

LOL

 

[Sylviaanne]

Just wait til she leaves the nest for her daily poo, then go in very quickly and remove the busted egg, plus any yucky bedding. ( what are you using for bedding btw ?) I would just take a little trash or compost bag along, do it very quickly! I would not worry too much about the good eggs-- you don't want to wipe on the good eggs too much bcz you could accidentally remove the bloom which would allow bacteria to enter inside the shell. Maybe very gently wipe with a scampish paper towel if it's really nasty.

Her bedding is hay and if I go in there she gets in a threatening posture but if I get too close she will ease off to the side of the nest and further until she turns and runs out of the building. I have to get close to her to get the eggs out of the next nest and she doesn't like me being that close.

Unfortunately, the egg was broken for a few days before I found it. I was removing chicken eggs from her nest and found that an egg had been broken. Some of the duck eggs are very nasty and dried on. If I used a damp paper towel, prcti

The chicken eggs that were nasty were washed with very warm water with a few drops of bleach in it and put into the incubator. Hopefully, they will make it.

 

[Sylviaanne]

What I did was to crowd her off her nest and when she went outside, I removed the eggs, sent two in the house to be washed and then scraped up the hay she had used to make her nest. About this time she had come back to the door and stood there hollering at me. I took a milk crate put an empty folded feed bag in the bottom and put wood shavings in the crate. I scooped a hole and put the eggs in and put a small dog cage where the nest used to be. Put the crate in the cage and caught mama and locked her in the cage. I would have put her on the eggs but when we caught her, her breast was wet and I wanted her to choose to get on the eggs or dry out. She sat in the front of the cage hissing and growling at us so we went outside for a bit. Checked on her a bit later and she still wasn't on the nest so we went about our business for a while. When we went back to check on her, she was sitting on the eggs so I unlocked the gate to the cage. She was still there when we went back to put all the others in the coop.

I don't know if those two washed eggs will survive but at least she's doing her job and hopefully there will be no bacteria problems with the eggs, ducklings or mama.