Confused Chicken

[ChickensCowboy]

This has happen to me several times now.
I built several nests for my 12 chickens to lay eggs at the same time
A chicken sets on one of the nests with say 5 or 6 eggs that I marked for her to hatch, in case other chickens lay eggs on her nest while she goes out to eat/drink. When she leaves the nest to go eat/drink she comes back and sets on the wrong nest as other nests also have eggs.

Any advise on how to prevent my chickens from setting on the wrong nest?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

With 12 chickens you only need 3 or at most, 4 nests. Are you sure your hen is broody? Why is there no bedding in the nests?

 

[ChickensCowboy]

With 12 chickens you only need 3 or at most, 4 nests. Are you sure your hen is broody? Why is there no bedding in the nests?

I guess I was to exited about my chickens and just went all out building more than enough nests.
She has not left the nest for 3 days now, so I'm gonna go with, yes she is broody.

There is bedding, just hard to see in this picture.

 

[Maybelline_Goode]

This has happen to me several times now.
I built several nests for my 12 chickens to lay eggs at the same time
A chicken sets on one of the nests with say 5 or 6 eggs that I marked for her to hatch, in case other chickens lay eggs on her nest while she goes out to eat/drink. When she leaves the nest to go eat/drink she comes back and sets on the wrong nest as other nests also have eggs.

Any advise on how to prevent my chickens from setting on the wrong nest?

You could keep her and her eggs in a dog crate. big enough for her to walk around in and get up to eat and drink of course. That's what I did for my friends broody hen and all but 1 of the 8 eggs hatched

Good Luck!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

You could keep her and her eggs in a dog crate. big enough for her to walk around in and get up to eat and drink of course. That's what I did for my friends broody hen and all but 1 of the 8 eggs hatched

Good Luck!

That's a very good idea! Do you let her out once a day to eat, drink, poop and dust bathe?

 

[Maybelline_Goode]

That's a very good idea! Do you let her out once a day to eat, drink, poop and dust bathe?

yep! my friend would open the cage for around 20 minutes and do some chickens chores around her coop and run area to make sure none of the chickens were messing with the nest. she cleaned her coop every day and it was the cleanest her coop had ever been

 

[Yardmom]

I use a dog crate with my broodies. I normally don't put the food and water inside. Once or twice a day I let the broody out. (Some need a little encouragement to go out). The first couple times they will go back to the old nest. Most catch on to come back to the crate after a couple days.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I will do this if I ever have broodies again. I was so ignorant the one time I had broodies, it was like a Keystone Kops cartoon when the chicks started hatching ....

 

[SourRoses]

That's a very good idea! Do you let her out once a day to eat, drink, poop and dust bathe?

Just chiming in that what what we started doing at some point was putting them in the big brooder (2.5 x 3.5 wood & hw cloth).
With water and food inside on the end furthest from the eggs. That when when she gets up for a snack she'll poop away from the eggs and it's easy enough to remove.
Before, when we would let them out with the flock to tend their needs, it opened the door (literally) for other hens to come in and mess with the eggs / add their own.
This way Momma keeps her private spot, although she can see the others through the hw cloth side, and when the babies hatch they have everything they need and no chance of falling out of a layer style nest or getting through the wide bars of a dog cage.

 

[Perris]

When she leaves the nest to go eat/drink she comes back and sets on the wrong nest as other nests also have eggs.

In the wild, there would only be one nest as hens go off to find somewhere private to sit. So when confronted with multiple nests containing eggs, her instincts don't tell her which one is hers. Most hens do have a favourite nesting box however, which they will use unless a higher ranking hen is already in it, or comes along and frightens them off it.

So you are more likely to avoid this problem if you let her sit in her favourite nest box, and exclude other hens from it while she's sitting, especially when she gets off for her daily constitutionals, because if she comes back to find another hen there, she'll just go sit on a different clutch and re-enter her trance there, on 'the wrong' eggs.

Given your nesting box set up, maybe fit a detachable grid over the front of her box, which will serve for almost the whole day, and you stand guard until she's ready to go back when you let her off to eat, drink, poo, bathe every day? If you don't have time or inclination for that, some sort of spacious cage on the floor of the coop, where you can put food, water and bath facilities away from the nest, would probably be required.