Hen Hatching

[<3<3 I <3 Chickens <3<3]

I am going to hatch some baby chickens this spring and a question sprung up... do hens (or pullets if your that pickey) continue laying egg after they are content with their size of a nest when they are hatching eggs?

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born2Bwild

 

[kathyinmo]

No. A broody hen just sits on her eggs, and does not lay more.

 

[<3<3 I <3 Chickens <3<3]

ok why does she stop?

 

[Year of the Rooster]

Because she needs to spend all her time and energy to hatch these eggs. They lose quite a bit of weight while brooding, even if they do get up once a day to eat and drink. Plus, if she continued laying through the brooding period, then the eggs wouldn't all hatch at the same time and would take up space under the hen that is vital to the already developing eggs.

 

[Ariel301]

The natural behavior of a chicken or any other bird is to lay eggs until it has reached the number it is satisfied with (I don't know about chickens, but most bird species have a typical number they lay) and then it will stop laying and raise the babies. It will not lay again until the babies have been raised to whatever point they leave the mother at. But with chickens as egg producers for us, we select for birds that don't have the broody instinct, and breed it out of most of them. We also select for the behavior of laying and laying without stop, which is not normal in birds in the wild. And we keep taking the eggs away from them, which stimulates them to keep on laying because their eggs have been 'stolen'. So they do not usually exhibit natural behavior, because we want them to produce better than most birds.

When I had a female cockatiel as a pet, she would lay eggs, and once she had four, she would quit laying and brood them. I did not have a male, so they were infertile. I was told to let her keep the eggs and brood them a while rather than take them immediately, because if I took every one she laid, she would just keep laying every day to replace the stolen egg. When she sat on them for a while and realized they were not developing, she would abandon them and go back to normal for a few months before starting over again.

 

[<3<3 I <3 Chickens <3<3]

ok thanks for your help! I learned what i needed!

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born2Bwild