Natural breeding thread

[MysteryChicken]

My first ever chick hatches were through broody hens. Of course there were the success, & the disasters that follows.

But now I got incubators, so I can decide between hatching with broody hens, or hatch with a machine.

 

[Skyeknight]

Chicks hatched by a mother are already part of the flock. My flock will help raise chicks all together if I let them hatch.

This is very true. If possible I think it's best to leave the new mother with the flock. Chickens are social creatures and more often than not the flock would probably raise the chicks together. I don't know exactly how this works in red junglefowl, but I do know of other bird species that live in groups that help their parents raise their siblings instead of procreating themselves. The Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) is an example of this.

Yet some hens do hatch and raise donations be they very young chicks or eggs from other hens.

Eggs I can kinda understand if it hatched underneath them. But I mean there are cases of birds sitting on rocks, so maybe if it looks kinda similar to an egg they will just think it's an egg.

I know that with sheep they mainly recognise their lambs by smell and if you want them to accept a lamb that isn't their own you should wash the lamb in the amniotic fluid of that sheep. They will accept lambs of a different colour, I myself have seen this method fail with sheep that are escape artists (problem solvers). Maybe chickens also focus on a specific sense. To me sound is the more obvious choose since chickens talk to their chicks when they are still in the egg. Chickens that accept already hatched chicks could just be "dumb" so to speak. One note though since chickens are a domesticated species some things might have accidently been bred out in the domestication process. But I don't know enough about chicken to conclude as to why, these are all just my own hypotheses.

Conclusion:
- Chickens will readily accept eggs that aren't their own and have a different colour, shape or size.
- Chickens won't readily accept already hatched chicks. Chickens that do should be treated as an exception. With a lot of effort and depending on the character of the chicken it might work. But I wouldn't advise this.

As to not derail this thread too much. This will be the last I say of it. If you have actual answers or sources PM me.