Progeny from heroic rooster

[sakerobot]

The new eggs did not work out too well. For some reason she was down to 2 eggs this morning. One egg was rotten and bursted, we candled the last egg and there are no veins, no movement, awkward weight, and we decided to dispose of it.

So now we will have to break her if she keeps being broody. It may be possible for us to pick up some young chicks to try putting them under her at night, but would that be too risky and not worth the new chicks potentiality being mistreated in some way? A store about an hour from here currently has some NH reds. I think they might be a few days old by now, so I'm disinclined to try. Any opinions?

 

[sakerobot]

This Tuesday, there should be some young hatchlings available. Right now she's sitting in an empty box. We're trying to decide if to let her stay broody and try putting the young chicks under her on Tuesday night if she's still broody by then. The other option is to break her broodiness at this point, as trying to have her raise new eggs would be too stressful for her physically.

 

[NatJ]

If you want to try putting the young chicks under her, I would probably give her some fake eggs to sit on until then.

There's a reasonable chance she would accept the, but of course there is no way to guarantee it.

If you don't give her chicks, or if she doesn't accept them, I agree that it would be better to break her broodiness for now and not let her start incubating any new clutches of eggs until she spends some time not-broody.

 

[sakerobot]

If you want to try putting the young chicks under her, I would probably give her some fake eggs to sit on until then.

There's a reasonable chance she would accept the, but of course there is no way to guarantee it.

If you don't give her chicks, or if she doesn't accept them, I agree that it would be better to break her broodiness for now and not let her start incubating any new clutches of eggs until she spends some time not-broody.

We decided on the following plan:

We'll let her spend the night in the empty box.

If this breaks her broodiness tomorrow, we'll leave her alone.

If she persists, which seems likely, we'll put three fake eggs under her tomorrow.

If she's still broody after tomorrow and keeps that box, we'll get three black jersey giant chicks and stick them under her after sunset.

The following morning, I'll stay in the coop and watch what happens. If she takes to them, we'll leave them alone and celebrate.

If it doesn't, I'll retrieve the chicks to an indoor brooder. If this happens, we'll add three EEs.

If another hen goes broody (Jessica was acting like it briefly this morning), we'll try again, but we'll segregate early and / at least mark the eggs. Things went badly here when another hen dropped a broken egg in her nest and ejected some of the eggs from the box. Had the eggs stayed clean, they might have had a better chance.

 

[NatJ]

We decided on the following plan:

We'll let her spend the night in the empty box.

If this breaks her broodiness tomorrow, we'll leave her alone.

If she persists, which seems likely, we'll put three fake eggs under her tomorrow.

If she's still broody after tomorrow and keeps that box, we'll get three black jersey giant chicks and stick them under her after sunset.

The following morning, I'll stay in the coop and watch what happens. If she takes to them, we'll leave them alone and celebrate.

If it doesn't, I'll retrieve the chicks to an indoor brooder. If this happens, we'll add three EEs.

If another hen goes broody (Jessica was acting like it briefly this morning), we'll try again, but we'll segregate early and / at least mark the eggs. Things went badly here when another hen dropped a broken egg in her nest and ejected some of the eggs from the box. Had the eggs stayed clean, they might have had a better chance.

Sounds like a good plan. I hope it goes well, no matter which option you end up with!

 

[sakerobot]

We called the store and they're not getting the chicks until tomorrow, but their hatch date was yesterday. As this would mean that they would have already spent two nights without a hen, it sounds like the probability of success is lower and it may be too late. We'll probably start to break her broodiness when we get home tonight. It's sad, because she put so much effort into it for the three weeks.

 

[NatJ]

We called the store and they're not getting the chicks until tomorrow, but their hatch date was yesterday. As this would mean that they would have already spent two nights without a hen, it sounds like the probability of success is lower and it may be too late. We'll probably start to break her broodiness when we get home tonight. It's sad, because she put so much effort into it for the three weeks.

The chicks are not too old, based on my experience having hens adopt chicks that were shipped. Some hens accepted the chicks, some did not, but I didn't see any problems with the age of the chicks.

I mostly did not turn them loose to free range, definitely not in the first week or so. But I did keep them in pens up to 6 or 8 feet across, and did not have trouble with chicks getting lost. I stuck chicks under hens at night, and by morning the chicks had figured out that the big clucky thing was the source of warmth.

If you want more chicks, I would go ahead and try to give them to her.
If you do not really want chicks anyway, then definitely go ahead and break her broodiness.

 

[sakerobot]

That sounds like it should still be plausible. Maybe we'll try it this way:

Tonight she goes into the basement where it'll be cooler than outside. We'll allow her a nesting box and see if she uses it for the night.

If so, we'll try introducing the chicks tomorrow night, with the added benefit of easier supervision. The downside is she won't be outside for a few days and might start off separated from the big flock at first. If it doesn't work, then we'll obviously break.

Hypothetically, if she accepts the three JGs on Wednesday, would we have a realistic chance of sneaking four EEs under her on Friday, or just cap it at one introduction?

 

[NatJ]

Hypothetically, if she accepts the three JGs on Wednesday, would we have a realistic chance of sneaking four EEs under her on Friday, or just cap it at one introduction?

That really depends on the hen. Personally, I would probably try it.

I have had hens that accepted multiple introductions. Some hens care if the chicks are the same color, some are happy to take any chick they can get.

I had one hen that I kept adding chicks until the youngest were two weeks younger than the oldest. That hen was happy to accept them all, but the youngest few chicks did not do as well as the older ones (the little ones needed more time under the hen to warm up, but she was paying more attention to the oldest chicks that wanted to run around eating and exploring.) An age difference of a week did not seem to cause that problem.

If you could get both kinds of chicks at the same time, I would give her one of each to start, so she's got more than one color. I think that makes it easier to add more of either color later. But if they are arriving on different days, I would give her the ones that come in first, and then if that goes well, try adding the ones that are available later.

 

[sakerobot]

If you could get both kinds of chicks at the same time, I would give her one of each to start, so she's got more than one color. I think that makes it easier to add more of either color later. But if they are arriving on different days, I would give her the ones that come in first, and then if that goes well, try adding the ones that are available later.

Well, one other breed they will be getting with the JGs is Buff Orpingtons, maybe we'll try to mix them up a little. Overall, adding more hens is definitely beneficial with our number of roosters.

Speaking of more hens - the store also periodically gets 8 week old pullets. Our youngest batch outside is aged 4-5 weeks. We're thinking of getting 4 or 6 started pullets, and placing them into the small coop with the other 14 at night. Is that a decent plan?