Young eggs under broody hen

[Tmaxson01]

I am so happy I have a broody hen. Just wondering if the small eggs from some speckled sussex that recently started laying (probably been laying about a month now) would be ok to put under the broody. The speckleds are in with a Rooster so they should be fertilized just wondering about the smallness of the eggs?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You can get different opinions on this. Using pullet eggs is generally not recommended on the extension websites for a couple of reasons. For the most part, these recommendations are for commercial breeders, not us backyard folks.

I think you may be beyond this one, but it sometimes takes a couple of weeks for the pullet to get its internal egg manufacturing plant working properly. Hatch rate could be lower if the egg is not put together properly. After a month, I would not worry about this one.

The pullet's shell gland makes a certain amount of shell material. With those smaller than normal eggs, that material may get laid on pretty thick, which could make them hard to hatch. This is a "may", not an absolute "will". I would not overly worry about this one either. With the amount of eggs we set compared to the thousands the hatcheries set, a small percentage won't make much difference.

Something from my personal experience. The eggs are smaller, so they don't have the nutrition in them to grow chicks to a normal size. As a result, the chicks you hatch will start out life smaller than normal. Their genetics are the same, but I don't know if they ever catch up in size to chicks that hatch from regular sized eggs.

I've hatched pullet eggs before. The pullets were about 23 weeks old when I collected the eggs. I hatched under a broody and got a real good hatch rate. So much for those first two warnings I gave you. Those chicks were small and I had some mortality with them the first 24 hours. That means some of them died. I don't know if that had something to do with that specific broody, was tied somehow to the egg size, or something else entirely. A test sample of one does not give that reliable a result. The chicks that made it past the first 24 hours did really well. They started out small and never really got to the size I would have expected, but that hatch was for meat and I ate them before they really matured. That hatch was later in the year when forage was not great. The food supply may have had something to do with how fast they grew.

Bottom, line. It is probably better to use eggs from older pullets, but if you want, go ahead. You will probably be satisfied with the results. Your situation sounds a lot like mine when I tried it. I'd do it again.

 

[Tmaxson01]

Thank you for replying. Didn't want to waste the eggs if they for sure wouldn't work. The eggs aren't tiny like they were when they first started and they've been laying for about a month now, so I think I'll try it. In actuality the eggs of the new girls are about the same size as my Buffs eggs that have been laying for almost 5 months. I think they just seem small to me because the sex links lay jumbo eggs.