Summary - My first hatching experience

[Riparian]

21 days ago one of my harco black sex links went broody. I set up a place for her on her own and gave her 9 eggs to sit on.

After about a week she had pushed three eggs out of the nest and ate them. So im down to 6 eggs.

at 10 days I candle most of the eggs with a high power flash light and find most of the eggs have embryos in them.

at day 20 I find a dead chick encased in a broken egg on the floor. not sure what happend here but I suspect that the hen left to get some food and water, and returned to find a chick breaking out of its shell. Thinking it was a broken egg, she pushed it out of the nest.

so at this point im down to 5 eggs. Inside the nest there are two chicks working out of shells. One is peeping and moving around. the other is still in the shell but not moving.

Day 21 my suspicions are confirmed when I go and check on the hen and there is a terrible stink. The one chick is dead in the broken shell. I remove its remains from the nest. The other chick is starting to dry out but still partially in its shell.

I candle the 3 remaining eggs. Only one shows a feathered chick inside. No sign of pipping yet.

Today is day 21, but I suspect I will have a sucess rate of 1 in 9 eggs.

 

[shuizar209]

Keep us posted... it happens to all of us...

 

[quailbrain]

She doesn't sound like a good mama hen to me. I can't imagine one of my birds eating her eggs. Is this common for that breed? IS this her first brood? I would watch carefully on that girl.

 

[Riparian]

its her first brood.

 

[Riparian]

well, I was right only one chick survived. Except now, the chick has some sort of prolapse in the rear. Dosent look like an a nal prolapse, its just a hard lump coming out the back, and she has a pasty butt.

Im a farmer and I can tell when something is going to be fatal, my instinct is that this chick needs to be culled for her own sake but I just cant bring myself to do it to this little chick after I worked so hard on setting up my first broody hen.

the hen is doing a really good job of caring for her chick. I see her teaching her how to drink and how to eat. its gona be sad when this little chick passes away.