
Speckles, in all her broody glory. She likes grass clippings.
Speckles is my first Broody Hen. (Although I did have a faker broody back in July of 2008) She’s a Speckled Sussex (from Ideal Hatchery) and went broody on April 5, 2009. A couple days after that, a couple of the other hens got into her nest and broke an egg. Concerned that the yolk-covered eggs wouldn’t hatch, I threw a couple of them out. After that, I noticed that she continued to collect eggs. For like a week. So she was setting on about a dozen eggs.
Going on advice that I read on The Backyard Chicken forum, I decided to try and seperate her into her own little nest. So I got out an old critter cage, put food, water, and plenty of straw in there, then transferred her eggs in. Last but not least, I put Speckles into her new home.
And she flipped out.
So, I moved her back to her old nest and gave her her eggs back and that night I marked them with a small blue ‘1′. I tried to candle* them (where you shine a light into the egg, looking for signs of development) but I couldn’t see anything so they all got marked with a blue ’1′. I had also noticed that Speckles would sometimes push eggs out from underneath of her, usually the same two. Legend has it that hens know when an egg is ‘bad’ or not developing and will push it out of the nest. People on The Backyard Chicken forum admitted that this wasn’t always true, but since she seemed to be pushing the same two out of the nest, I decided if she did it again I would take them away from her.
Last night, I candled the eggs again and a couple of them were showing sure signs of development. (I could see veins in one and a ‘mass’ in another) I should have marked them, but didn’t think to at the time. She had also added more (!!) eggs to her nest. I could tell b/c these were ones without the blue ‘1′ marked on them.
This morning, she had again pushed the same two eggs out from underneath of her, so I decided to crack one and see if it was, indeed, a bad egg. Unfortuneatly, it was NOT a bad egg and was instead a small developing chick. I felt horrible!
So my new plan is to candle the eggs tonight and MARK the ones that are developing. Some of them are too dark to tell (oddly enough the green eggs are the hardest one to see) and if some of them are showing no signs of development, I will remove them from her. Right now she has too many and she can’t cover them all.
The only other concern I have is that some of the eggs are so far apart development wise, I’d hate for her to hatch a couple and get off her nest and leave some eggs that would have hatched.
I know that some people would say to just leave her alone, but b/c she’s in the nest boxes with the others, she’ll never hatch any out if she keeps pushing out the good eggs and collecting new ones!
Sigh.
I’ll try and get a picture of one of the candled eggs tonight. Keep your fingers crossed that there’s development in them all!
Feel free to offer any suggestions on dealing with a broody hen!
*How I’m Candling: I’ve actually been using a flashlight to candle them, although my dad told me that they used a coffee can with a small hole cut into the bottom of it and a lightbulb when he was younger. I may try his method tonight since the flashlight is a little bigger than what I need.
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