Two hens setting together

[chuckschickens]

Help!! I don't want no more chickens. I don't have room in my coop. I don't need any more eggs, I furnish my kids and mother in law as it is. I went out to the coop a couple of days ago and found one of my girls clinging to the nest. I gently lifted her up and took the eggs out from under her and she was making a kind of whining noise. OK, I'm a wimp. I feel rotton because I know she wants to be a mommy and I am stealing her potential babies. I decided to let her sit on five eggs. I marked them and started reading other strings on here. I built her a nesting box and plan on isolating her in a couple of days when I can finish a shelter (dog house) and pen. I just left from the coop and another hen is trying to set. Can I isolate these hens together since they will both be setting and hatching chicks, or do I have to build another pen for each of them?

 

[chuckschickens]

Come on folks, If I have two hens setting at once, can they stay in the same pen while they set? They started setting one day apart from one another.

 

[kasey08]

sorry i'm new to the whole chicken thing. what kind are they?

 

[Scoop]

I don't see a problem with it. We actually had 2 hens broody at once and they would even switch nesting boxes from time to time and sit on each other's eggs. I think you can let nature take it's course but I'm not an expert.

 

[Julie08]

it will be fine to leave them together and let them co parent. Obviously keep an eye on them and make sure they dont fight or hurt the chick.

Good luck.

 

[chuckschickens]

Quote:
They are Heinz 57 variety. A young man in our neighborhood hatched 100 + chickens just because he had an incubator and did not know what to do with them. I always wanted chickens so I took 8 of them and have been in love with them ever since! I lost one when she got out of the pen and flew over the fence with my dogs. Sure wanted to kill some dogs!

Thank you folks very much for the info. I will report back my results. The dog house I will be using is small, just big enough to put two nesting boxes in. I don't think that will be a problem because when the second hen started setting, she sqeezed in with the first hen. I moved her into another nest and placed a couple of eggs under her. They both seemed content.

Now I just have to hope that none of the other four hens decide to go broody on me.

Thanks again!

 

[kasey08]

lol goodluck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

People do it all the time and are often successful. Sometimes there are disasters. They are living animals. No one can accurately predict what they will do. We all have different experiences and different results.

A couple of the things that can go wrong if they are together.

They can fight, either over the eggs or over the chicks. Sometimes one hen wants all the eggs or all the chicks and tries to take them. The other resists and eggs get broken or chicks get killed in the process. Even if no eggs are broken of chicks are killed, one hen winds up with everything and the other is left with nothing. When this happens, it is normally over chicks but it can happen with eggs. And it can happen even if there is quite a bit of age difference in the chicks.

One hen may kill the other's chicks as they hatch, whether they are sharing a nest or are on separate nests. It does not mean she is a bad mommy. She is just protecting her (future) chicks from competition.

If they are on separate nests with eggs set at different times, the hen on the later eggs may abandon her eggs and go try to mother the hatched chicks, whether she shares or tries to take them away.

As I said, many people successfully have two or more broodies together, either in the same area or in the same nest. Not all are succesful though. I do believe you need to either break the broody or give her eggs to hatch. To let her remain broody with no end in sight is cruel in my opinion. She is not eating or drinking enough so it weakens her. She is more susceptible to parasites and disease.

Good luck however you decide.

 

[elmo]

I had three broody hens in nesting boxes side by side together (no other chickens) during the 21 day incubation period with no problems from any of them. They were never or rarely off the nest at the same time anyway.

But once the first clutch started to hatch, I isolated that hen in another pen. And since I only have one other run to work with, I built a makeshift broody pen to go inside my run to keep the other two broodies separate once they begin to hatch their clutches. If it looks like the two hens are getting along OK when their chicks get a bit older, I'll simply take down the makeshift pen. These are the two lower ranking hens, though. I wouldn't try to do this with the top ranking hen until the chicks are much older.

Here's my makeshift broody pen, rigged together from old birdcage panels and leftover hardare cloth:

 

[chuckschickens]

Quote:
The first hen is setting on five eggs and the second hen is setting on two. You wrote, "break the broody". How do you do that?

Another question... tonight while checking on the girls I found that one of the five eggs that was under the first setter had been moved over to the other hens nest. I don't understand this. That egg had to be lifted up and moved over the divider in order for that to happen. Am I going crazy? is it possible for a hen to "pick up and move" an egg?