- Mar 17, 2016
- 34
- 22
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Our broody hen was sitting on her first clutch of eggs and hatched 3 of the 5 eggs over the first 2 days. I checked the other 2 eggs and one was cracked and neither one had any movement or sounds coming from them, but I figured I’d give them another day to try to hatch. Meanwhile, mama hen was being good with her babies and would take little bits of food from next to the nesting box and give it to them.
All of a sudden today (approximately 48 hours or so after the first one hatched) she is all kinds of freaked out. I saw her get off the nest and figured she was ready to leave the bad eggs and start raising the babies, but then she freaked out and went back in her box looking for her eggs and flinging straw everywhere with no regard for the new chicks, who were also getting flung everywhere. I gave her the one unbroken egg back and she sat on it for a while. Then the same thing happened 20 minutes later, she got off the nest for a minute, kind of gave some food to the new chicks, then went back in the nest and started stepping on everything and moving around with zero regard for the new babies. One of the babies has a small injury on the back of its neck but I’m not sure if that’s from Mama or from another of our chickens (they’ve mostly left the babies alone so I’m suspecting it came from Mama accidentally hurting it).
What should I do? Do I just need to take the babies and the bad egg away from her? Do I take the babies temporarily until she gets over it or just figure she’s not a good mama and raise them in a brooder? She was doing great with them the first 2 days, I’m not sure what changed or what I should do about it. Help!
All of a sudden today (approximately 48 hours or so after the first one hatched) she is all kinds of freaked out. I saw her get off the nest and figured she was ready to leave the bad eggs and start raising the babies, but then she freaked out and went back in her box looking for her eggs and flinging straw everywhere with no regard for the new chicks, who were also getting flung everywhere. I gave her the one unbroken egg back and she sat on it for a while. Then the same thing happened 20 minutes later, she got off the nest for a minute, kind of gave some food to the new chicks, then went back in the nest and started stepping on everything and moving around with zero regard for the new babies. One of the babies has a small injury on the back of its neck but I’m not sure if that’s from Mama or from another of our chickens (they’ve mostly left the babies alone so I’m suspecting it came from Mama accidentally hurting it).
What should I do? Do I just need to take the babies and the bad egg away from her? Do I take the babies temporarily until she gets over it or just figure she’s not a good mama and raise them in a brooder? She was doing great with them the first 2 days, I’m not sure what changed or what I should do about it. Help!