Candled eggs after 7 days, oh boy! Need help please

[thistlewick]

I typically use a blue or green sharpie. worked last time. the egg that I marked hatched into a beautiful mixed breed Plymouth, and now since I got rid of my extra roos, he's the leader of the flock.

(the reason there was only one is that two hens were in the same nest. eggs did not get proper heating, and I learned an important lesson about keeping my broodies separate.)

Okay

Yeah, if she's good and broody, one extra week should be fine. You could toss the half-developed eggs and replace with all new and mark them.

To your previous question -- removing 7 eggs probably won't upset her. Hens graft to the nest, not the eggs, so they'll stay on that nest even if all the eggs are removed. So if you do let her keep her 2 eggs, and nothing hatched, you'll either have to break her or buy her a couple store bought chicks. (I've done that before and it worked)

okay I am going to decide today if I want to just 'reset'

I have a question about candling;

I did candle all of the 9 eggs (before I chucked 7 and kept 2)

On most of the 7 that seemed weird or non-viable--- they were, when candled, half DARK and half CLEAR and NO VEINS. And sideways -- not top/bottom. It looked really wrong.

What the HECK is going on when they are like that?? So many of those 7 were like that. I just tossed them, it seemed *wrong*


edit; it basically looked like this when candling:

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Yeah I know this, this isn't what I'm asking though

I'm asking if I can reset her -- basically get her a whole new set of eggs and start the 3 week counter over.... and asking if this will stress her out too much.

It's been one week - just wondering if 4 weeks is too much for a chicken to handle. That's just what I was wondering.

It's the hen that decides how long she's going to be broody, or if she's going to "reset," not you. She's going to be busy taking care of the hatched chicks ... teaching them what to eat and what to avoid, how to peck and scratch, how to dust bathe, how to hide from hawks, and just how to be chickens. She'll call them to her to get warm, to snuggle up for naps, to keep from being pecked by the adults, etc. She'll be far to busy to set on another nest for at least five or six weeks until she weans her littles. It's not a matter of it "stressing" her, she just CAN'T set on another clutch right away.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Further thought: even if you take the chicks away from her and raise them yourself, and she DOES set again right away, YES, it's too hard on her body. Hens can die from brooding back to back like that. They lose too much weight and muscle tone. If I had a hen that lost her clutch (the eggs didn't hatch) and she kept trying, I would do everything possible to break her broodiness. It's not good to let them brood too long.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

If you want that many chicks I'd advise you to invest in a good incubator.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Since one has a wiggly eye already -- I can't really give her more, since she's already sitting for 1 week -- I don't want to add another extra week of brooding on to her. Can I?

Before a hen even starts to lay eggs she builds up extra fat. Each hen is different in how much extra fat she stores and where, but most of it is usually in a "fat pad" in her pelvic region. This stored fat allows the hen to spend most of her time on the nest taking care of the eggs instead of having to be out looking for food and water.

How long will that extra fat last? It can vary. Some hens come off of the nest a lot more looking for food than others. Some store different amounts to start with. Typically when I have a hen go broody I wait a couple of days to assure she is truly broody before I give her eggs. Sometimes it may take me close to a week to save enough eggs I want her to hatch for various reasons. I collect all I want her to hatch, mark them, and start them all at the same time so they will hatch together. Sometimes things happen so I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be but I've never had a hen that was truly broody to start with break from being broody doing this.

I arbitrarily set a limit in how long I want a hen to be broody at five weeks. They may vary as to when they use up all of that stored fat but I consider 5 weeks a safe number. While they are broody they can and should lose weight, but that is fat put there for that purpose. I do not consider that a threat to her health. It is Mother Nature's way of helping birds survive and not go extinct.

I've marked eggs using Crayola wax crayons, pencil lead (use a number 1 lead, much darker than a number 2 or 3), ink from back in the day before we had ball point pens so we had ink available, and Sharpies. No matter what you use somebody will tell you why it will not work but I've used those and they all worked.

if you remove the two eggs under her and start a new batch of marked eggs it should work. I don't understand why you had such a failure of the first batch of eggs though. That part concerns me a bit. But your process with the broody should be OK.

Good luck!

 

[thistlewick]

It's the hen that decides how long she's going to be broody, or if she's going to "reset," not you. She's going to be busy taking care of the hatched chicks ... teaching them what to eat and what to avoid, how to peck and scratch, how to dust bathe, how to hide from hawks, and just how to be chickens. She'll call them to her to get warm, to snuggle up for naps, to keep from being pecked by the adults, etc. She'll be far to busy to set on another nest for at least five or six weeks until she weans her littles. It's not a matter of it "stressing" her, she just CAN'T set on another clutch right away.

you really misunderstood what I meant

Sorry about that, if I wasn't clear.


She's been sitting on a nest for 1 week only.

I wanted to know if I could take out the 2 eggs she's been sitting on and give her a fresh set of maybe 5-6 and let her go ahead and sit on those for the next 3 weeks, basically adding ONE WEEK to her entire broody time.

She hasn't hatched anything yet. Sorry I don't know how else to explain it so it's clear.

 

[thistlewick]

Before a hen even starts to lay eggs she builds up extra fat. Each hen is different in how much extra fat she stores and where, but most of it is usually in a "fat pad" in her pelvic region. This stored fat allows the hen to spend most of her time on the nest taking care of the eggs instead of having to be out looking for food and water.

How long will that extra fat last? It can vary. Some hens come off of the nest a lot more looking for food than others. Some store different amounts to start with. Typically when I have a hen go broody I wait a couple of days to assure she is truly broody before I give her eggs. Sometimes it may take me close to a week to save enough eggs I want her to hatch for various reasons. I collect all I want her to hatch, mark them, and start them all at the same time so they will hatch together. Sometimes things happen so I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be but I've never had a hen that was truly broody to start with break from being broody doing this.

I arbitrarily set a limit in how long I want a hen to be broody at five weeks. They may vary as to when they use up all of that stored fat but I consider 5 weeks a safe number. While they are broody they can and should lose weight, but that is fat put there for that purpose. I do not consider that a threat to her health. It is Mother Nature's way of helping birds survive and not go extinct.

I've marked eggs using Crayola wax crayons, pencil lead (use a number 1 lead, much darker than a number 2 or 3), ink from back in the day before we had ball point pens so we had ink available, and Sharpies. No matter what you use somebody will tell you why it will not work but I've used those and they all worked.

if you remove the two eggs under her and start a new batch of marked eggs it should work. I don't understand why you had such a failure of the first batch of eggs though. That part concerns me a bit. But your process with the broody should be OK.

Good luck!

oooh this so so great thank you

well the first 3 she started with, 2 were looking like they were developing and 1 looked unfertilized

it was the next 6 that looked bizarre -- and those had been laid over the last 7 days completely unbeknownst to me

Most of those extra eggs that had been laid over the last 7 days looked like this when candled:

All dark dark dark on one side only, completely clear on the other side. ZERO veins.

Were they rotten? It just didn't look like anything I have seen in videos or pics from anyone.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have no idea on those eggs. That makes no sense to me in that short of a time frame.

 

[horselover1999]

Things I learned while working in a hatchery in college:
1) Sharpie is okay to use to mark eggs. It's all we used. Black or a certain color sharpie on chicken eggs told us what bloodline the eggs were from. We used metallic sharpies on the quail eggs so we could read the cage/hen number. We always got good hatch rates.
I used pencil under a broody hen once and it didn't work out. Now, I isolate my broody hens so no extra eggs are added.
2) You can tell when an egg is rotten by candling. We only candled once, when we transferred eggs from the incubator to the hatcher, and you could tell when bacteria had gotten into the egg. The egg lit up green, and you could see the stuff in there swirling around.
I don't know what the half dark eggs are though.