broody hen 5 weeks now, no chicks - what to do?

[phantomnl]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum - but hoping to get some advice!

We have, for the first time ever, a broody hen. She did very well, gathering eggs and staying on the nest. We have a cockerel and 4 other hens, too. Initially the hen gathered too many eggs (21). I removed 11, but after a few days she'd collected more again. I have left the eggs since then as I didn't know which ones had been there the longest. She's now been on the nest for about 5 weeks and there's no sign of chicks. One of our other hens has shown signs of broodiness now and sometimes shares the nest and also looks after it when mother no.1 comes off for feeding.

What do we do? Do we take the eggs away (I don't think there'll be any chicks)?
Do we discourage mother no.1 and if so, how?
Do we let mother no.2 give it a go, letting her collect new eggs?

We want our hens to do well and don't mind whether or not we'd get chicks, although it'd be lovely to see some running round. Our hens had 1 house within a metal run that's open during the day so they have access to a massive field (with sheep). At night we lock the run and house to stop foxes getting to them. I have introduced a second house for the cockerel and not-broody hens, to try and prevent egg-laying in the house with the broody hens. This has been relatively successful. We need the run for all to keep the chicken food away from the sheep. Otherwise I might have locked one broody hen in the run with the house...

Anyhow, sorry for the long message, it'd be great to hear your views on this. Thanks!

 

[serama1]

Hi, 35days without chicks does not sound promising, very likely that she had too many eggs to look after or may be were not fertile. have you candled the eggs to check?

i have had a situation were another hen used the nest to lay her eggs too and ended up with a prolonged brooding process - I had to remove the chicks as they hatched until all with chicks had hatched and re-inroduced the chicks back and luckily the hen accepted all of them (a risk as sometimes a hen will not accept other older chicks)

 

[chrismahon]

Welcome to the forum Phantomnl. If you removed the last eggs and left the early ones they were probably too old to hatch anyway, even if fertile. 9 days old is a sensible limit; older than that it's pot luck. You would have chicks at about 21 days after she started to sit properly, so at 5 weeks no hope. I'd put all the eggs in the bin because they will be going off badly and I'm surprised they haven't broken yet. Next time mark the eggs with pencil so you know what date they appeared. When broody and you want a hatch they need separating to a small coop and run. This discourages her from wandering off and stops interference.

Simplest way to discourage number one is to remove the eggs and keep taking her out of the nest. You can let number 2 try but is she old enough to sit properly -should be 2 years old. Otherwise discourage her as well. Keeping taking them out of the nest box (which need to be blocked at night) has limited success. Locking her in a seperate run with no coop for 3 days and nights always works for us but can take too much out of them as we found out recently when one died. We've got 6 broodies at the moment, none on eggs and not enough spare runs so i've all but given up with them!!!