BROODY HEN PECKING HER EGGS ! PLEASE HELP

[billygeorgedear]

Okay so I'm kind of new to the whole hatching chicks under a broody I have done a few in an incubator last year but this year my chicken went broody

I brought 6 fertile eggs and Layed them under her at night in her own pen with food and water I have a week to go untill the chicks are supposed to hatch and I'm now down to 4 eggs

The first one to go was a light egg and had a crack in and we woke up the next morning and it was broke nothing inside and some mess on the floor and some blood, I didn't think anything of it and though she had just crushed it when sitting or stepping over them

Then the next was a dark egg with a hole in and I removed it and it smelt but looked inside and I saw a baby chick with feathers and some blood and didn't really know what was going on so I took it out as it smelt mouldy and the other 4 remaining eggs left in

There was one egg with a small crack but hadn't penetrated the membrane so I put a bit of electrical tape on the crack and put it back in

This morning when she got up got some food she walked back over to the eggs once fineshed and she started pecking the eggs we tried to encourage her to stop with some more food shaking it and then she did it again then we repeated what we did then she just say on her eggs

I'm on 19 and new to this whole thing they have 6 days to go and I'm worries I'm going to end up with no eggs at all thanks

 

[Ridgerunner]

If she is opening her eggs like that you need to put them in an incubator.

The vast majority of broody hens do a great job by instinct alone. They just seem to know what to do. On rare occasions you get one that is a bad broody. They may kill their chicks as they hatch or do other things wrong. It looks like you may have a bad one.

It’s not unusual for a chicken to eat an egg that is open. If it is thin-shelled to the point it breaks just by a hen walking on it in the nest or something else is opening it, it’s pretty natural for a hen to eat it. It’s when they open an egg on their own to eat it that it becomes a problem. From what you are describing, she’s doing it on purpose. I’d watch her to see that she isn’t eating other eggs in the coop whether she is broody or not. In any case, I would not let her brood any other eggs if she goes broody again.

It really stinks that you are having a bad experience your first time with a broody hen. Usually it is a great experience but when you deal with living animals, sometimes things happen.

 

[billygeorgedear]

Thank you very much I was really exited to have a broody hen and was loving the fact that I was getting a clutch of chicks of a hen so I may just have to take the eggs out and finish them in the incubator then ?

 

[billygeorgedear]

**** I've just realised I've sent my incubator away for someone else and may not be able to get it back I time I may just have to let nature take it's course which is unfortunate and very sad is there anything else I could possibly do

 

[Ridgerunner]

That makes it rough. The only thing I can think of to try is to try to make the nest darker. Darkness seems to sometimes help with this.

How to do this? Any time you mess with a broody, you take the chance of breaking her or confusing her, but can you hang a curtain over the front of the nest, or most of the opening? Maybe take a piece of fabric and cut vertical strips 1" or 2" wide so the hen can get through it but it will block out most of the light. Use a dark colored material.

If you try this, you'll need to watch her to make sure she goes back to the right nest when she returns form her daily constitutional. I had a broody hen do that once. She went to the wrong nest. I think another hen was laying an egg in her nest so she got confused and went to the wrong nest. By the time I found her, the eggs were ice cold to the touch, but I just put her back on the right nest. Those eggs were about the same stage as yours are, less than a week to go. That broody hatched 11 out of 11 eggs, so them being cold was not a death sentence.

Good luck with it. Broodies really are not usually this difficult.

 

[billygeorgedear]

Thank you so much I shall do this now

 

[Ladies of the Forest]

I also am experiencing a version of this. I’m on day 20, yesterday and today I found eggs that were broken open, not kept, bright yellow yolk inside,. I have sister hands that always share their brood. This is the third time that they have had a family of eggs together. I don’t know which one is Peking the eggs open, one of them did have a softer shell so I don’t know if that’s why this happened.