This really does feel like a ridiculous question but oh well. We don't usually let our broody hens hatch eggs because we always end up with too many boys. One of our hens found a great hiding spot this spring though and ended up hatching three chicks. After that, our adorable bantam hen (honestly not sure if she's a Brahma or Cochin, they look very similar to me and her breed hasn't mattered much to us) decided she wanted to hatch eggs too. The poor girl has spent most of the summer sitting on eggs. Her first "nest" was in a terrible spot and washed away in a huge rain storm, broken eggs and dead chicks everywhere. The next nest...not sure what went wrong but eggs broke but she wouldn't give up on the nest and ended up sitting on maggots. The third time was apparently the charm for her because she successfully incubated way too many eggs, six of her own and three big eggs from one of our other hens. So far four chicks from her little eggs and one of the big egg chicks have hatched. The first three little ones hatched yesterday and the other two hatched overnight. She seems to want to keep sitting on the last four eggs and the other two small eggs do look like they could be ready to hatch soon. But the other two big eggs were obviously new additions to her nest. The embryos are quite small but definitely alive, I could see them moving when I checked them. I was planning on letting her keep them until she decides to give up on her nest and then I can let them finish "cooking" in the incubator inside.
The concern I have is she's so small that it seems like she might be having a hard time keeping all the babies and remaining eggs covered and it's getting into the cool weather season. We decided to move her nest up to our front porch over the weekend because she kept grabbing more eggs from the other hens and eggs were falling out from under her and getting cold. This morning one of her little chicks was out from under her and was quite cold. Not sure why it was out or how long it had been out, but the poor thing was cold. Would it be really ridiculous to give her a heat lamp at night? I think our forecast actually showed slightly warmer overnight temperatures the next several nights, like in the 50's instead of the 40's, but 50's still seem pretty cold for tiny chicks...and a tiny mamma hen who feels a little scrawnier than normal since she spent months trying to incubate eggs. Or do you think they might be warm enough if I just covered their pen with a good blanket? They're in a nest box inside a 4'x4' wire play yard type pen up on our porch right now.
(I didn't have any worries about the chicks hatched by the big hen this spring because the hen was plenty big enough to cover three chicks and they hatched on like June 3rd or something so it was plenty warm outside.)
Thanks!
The concern I have is she's so small that it seems like she might be having a hard time keeping all the babies and remaining eggs covered and it's getting into the cool weather season. We decided to move her nest up to our front porch over the weekend because she kept grabbing more eggs from the other hens and eggs were falling out from under her and getting cold. This morning one of her little chicks was out from under her and was quite cold. Not sure why it was out or how long it had been out, but the poor thing was cold. Would it be really ridiculous to give her a heat lamp at night? I think our forecast actually showed slightly warmer overnight temperatures the next several nights, like in the 50's instead of the 40's, but 50's still seem pretty cold for tiny chicks...and a tiny mamma hen who feels a little scrawnier than normal since she spent months trying to incubate eggs. Or do you think they might be warm enough if I just covered their pen with a good blanket? They're in a nest box inside a 4'x4' wire play yard type pen up on our porch right now.
(I didn't have any worries about the chicks hatched by the big hen this spring because the hen was plenty big enough to cover three chicks and they hatched on like June 3rd or something so it was plenty warm outside.)
Thanks!
) <33
