Mother hen STILL broody

[Super Admin]

Hello all! We have a momma who just hatched on Thursday and she is still laying on the nest. She has not gotten up. The new babies are ready to leave without her! We had to remove the balance of the eggs, they did not hatch. How long will it take her to get it? Is there something we can do to help her?? PLEASE HELP US. Thank you.

 

[jjdward]

If this is her first hatch then she may take a while. If its not her first, I would say that she knows what she is doing. Give her a few more days.

 

[LilRalphieRoosmama]

Do you have food and water very close to her? This will entice her to lead the babies to it. My broody hatched out two chicks yesterday (killed one

) but she and baby made a new nest this morning closer to the feed. I was surprised to find she was sitting on 13 eggs! I candled them and just put 5 in the incubator.

 

[PeeperKeeper]

We try to feed sugar water to chicks first 3 days with a syringe. And we usually have to move hen and chicks to a new site as the hatching nest is too high off the ground. We found that Pet Taxies are great to move a new little family in and the hens LOVE it! They return to it every night. I think they feel very secure in their little habitats.

 

[caralouise1974]

I wouldn't worry - hens are 'programmed' to wait a couple of days after the first chick hatches to give the rest of the chicks time to get out. I'll bet she's up and about with them tomorrow (Sunday).

My BO recently hatched two chicks, with a 36 hour gap between them, and she waited until the 48 hours were up, almost to the hour, before leaving the nest. Sadly the later chick was very weak and we ended up having to take it from her and have a local fowl trust centre put it in their 'intensive care' unit (I don't know if it survived or not), but the fact she stayed put on the nest at least gave it chance to hatch out.

I'm sure she knows what she's doing. Don't worry too much just yet.