When will hen start setting?

[tlcollins13]

We have a lavender orpington that we are hoping to hatch eggs from. She has laid 10 eggs in the past 12 days, but hasn't started trying to set on them yet. How long should I give her before I remove them? If she doesn't become broody, will the eggs still be good enough to remove and use the incubator or do I need to collect fresh ones for that? Thanks

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

We have a lavender orpington that we are hoping to hatch eggs from. She has laid 10 eggs in the past 12 days, but hasn't started trying to set on them yet. How long should I give her before I remove them? If she doesn't become broody, will the eggs still be good enough to remove and use the incubator or do I need to collect fresh ones for that? Thanks

A good approach to take to this sort of a situation is to either gather and incubate manually (generally speaking the first major shift in successful hatch rates comes at the 10 day mark of egg age before setting - however successful hatches can be had beyond that) *or* gather your eggs and store as though for hatching rotating eggs in/out at about the 10 day mark for any given egg (moving the "old" egg to an eating carton, etc) while you wait and hope that she goes broody. If I truly wanted to hatch the eggs I would not worry about waiting for her to go broody, I would incubate manually, as there is no guarantee that she will ever go broody. A good compromise would be to set some in the incubator and then rotate the eggs as described above so that if she does go broody you can give her a few to hatch for you.