Very strange question!!

[NonnasBabies]

I set 12 eggs on the 4th of December. A week or so later when I took her off the nest to go potty there was only 11. Now I'm more or less blaming me on that since I could have miscounted when I placed them under her. 2 hatched on Dec 24th, and there was only 8 eggs left in the nest. (so now another one is missing) On December 25th when I checked I have 7 babies and 3 eggs left. Yesterday we had a total of 9 babies and the last egg was zipped open where you could see some of the chick. I had a feeling it had died in the shell but since this was my first time I thought I'd wait till today. When I checked them earlier the egg was gone and I still had a total of 9 babies!!

SO, is it normal for a broody to eat the egg and chick if it died during hatch??

 

[LarryPQ]

Yupers. Kinda gross, but broodies need the protien, since they tend to forgo eating for sitting. Also, I would think sitting for 21 days would make for some serious boredom.

 

[Judy]

I've seen it; I assumed she was just keeping the nest clean.

 

[NonnasBabies]

It's good to know she's not the only one!! Was hoping it wasn't some kind of malfunction in her because she has been such a wonderful mother!!