This year I have incubated three sets of eggs and now that the weather is warmer I decided I wanted the hen to do the work for me. It is so much easier raising baby chickens when the mother hen takes care of the humidity and temperature levels of the eggs and then when they hatch she shows them all the neat stuff a little chick should know.
I saved eggs in one coop for two days and then Ellie Mae started testing the nest. At this time we had seven eggs. She tested it on and off for two days and then finally stayed. In the past I would have marked the eggs with a magic marker so I would know which eggs were the originals. Well I didn’t do it and now I have 18 eggs in the nest! All of the hens in the chicken coop have been laying eggs on top of her. Well, not all because I was getting eggs so it was probably two of them.
So what’s a girl to do but move the hen to a different location. My plan is to move her this evening after dark, eggs and all, to a separate cage that awaits with a nesting box made just for the hen. If you read my other blog post, Homemade Nest Boxes for Chickens, I used the cardboard box method. So easy to get her set up with a temporary home.
I will also try and candle this evening but I don’t think they are far enough along to be able to tell. We will see. I’m hoping so because 18 eggs is alot of eggs to be hatching. Can you imagine raising 18 baby chickens? Not me!
Tags: broody hen, Chickens
May 4th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I would be very leery about using a Magic marker they smell so bad you know there full of chemicals and what’s to keep it from absorbing through the egg shell, I take a water color marker and draw a circle around the egg, I even date them on the end, this doesn’t wear off through the sitting. This way I can take a quick glance and see that there’s an egg that doesn’t belong and remove it.
I did the same thing this year, I forgot to mark my eggs fortunately my girls start sitting a few days apart this makes it convenient to just keeps slipping the unhatched eggs under the next and candling in between time.
I tried moving a young hen that was sitting for the 1st time with no success, she was missing for 3 nights, I finally found her in the fenced in vegetable garden in a large flower pot that was laying on its side, I moved her and her dozen eggs into the henhouse (a large 5x 8 cage in my garage) in a cage with the nesting box after 3 days of sitting on the edge of the box and not on the eggs I let her back out and move the eggs under the other hens, I forgot to mark them so I don’t know if they made it or not, at that time I had 4 other hens sitting so I distributed them evenly.
I didn’t realize that she would not sit on them or I would have taken them away in the beginning and just left her a couple of golf balls to sit on until I was certain she was actually going to sit on them then I would move them back under her and I would have marked them that they were hers.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The funny thing is with moving the eggs until they hatch the chicks will eventually end up with the original hen that was sitting on them the longest.
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May 6th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Broody hens are so much fun… they really have an attitude! (Not that I mess with them or anything…*snicker*)
Farm Chick Paulas last blog post..Seeing spots
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May 8th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I love the colors of the feathers!
Mine aren’t ready yet to lay eggs, but I will know what to do now when they are ready.
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