Hen Abandoned her nest

[llama mama]

My oldest hen(about 2) was setting on a nest for 7 days with 18 eggs!! All the eggs were laid from all my other hens, because they are all different. They were all laid within the week so they are not old. Now she has abandoned the nest and gone to another coop with 1 egg. Are these eggs BAD now? Its been cold out and she only sat on them for 6 days...

 

[MountainSeramas]

It depends on how long the hen has been off of the nest. If the eggs were fertile they should have developing chicks inside. I have had eggs abandoned for a couple of hours and I tucked them under other broodies and had a good hatch rate. I'm not proud of this but once I had a hen who had dud after dud egg under her and I didn't want her to continue to sit on her eggs if they weren't going to hatch because they were about three days past due so I threw the eggs away in the garbage and forgot about them. A few hours later I walked into my kitchen to get a glass of water and I heard "Pew! Pew! Pew!" coming from my garbage can. I found the peeping egg (and recandled the rest to make sure!), put it in my incubator, and named the chick "Oscar" when he hatched.

 

[henroo]

You should candle the eggs to see if they are infertile or if there are embryo inside... if they are infertile throw them away... if they are fertile put the eggs under her in the new nest and see if she accepts them...

 

[jammyjammy2112]

is she still broody maybe she just got confused if she is still broody put her back on i had a hen off 6 eggs for 24 hours they all hatched sadly 5 fell in a bucket full of water but i saved the last wan and she is about 2 years old now and raised 3 broods
so the eggs are probly still viable