incubating naturally

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simon+colette

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hello group, as i mentioned in my last posting we have the 12 buff eggs in the incubator, since wednesday though one of our croads has become really broody and is sitting on the daily laid eggs pretty much all day.

the question i ask is can i take 6 eggs out of the incubator and put them under my broody hen, bearing in mind though that the eggs have been in there for 4 days, will this work or am i best just leaving it, i feel that if i do move some eggs under her then at least she will be serving a purpose.

any advice?
 
Yes you can try this! the fact that the eggs are four days into incubation won't make any difference to the hen. If your Croad is sitting in a communal nest box with other hens popping into lay, it would be better to move her to her own sitting box and run.
Give her some dummy eggs to settle her down, then after a day or two for her to get used to the new coop and run, slip the sitting eggs under her, preferably at night when she will be at her calmest.
My only reservation would be that as a Large and Heavy breed, she may be a little clumsy with her eggs or any resultant chicks. She may be fine however, Just keep a careful eye on her.
 
I didn't think moving eggs under 7 days old was a good idea LC, based on previous posts. There is a really good chapter on natural incubation in Lewis Wright's 1867 book 'The Practical Poultry Keeper'. There is a free download available from a Californian web site. They have lots of the editions but all, except that and the 1901 edition, are poor transcripts. Definitely worth a read as at that time using broodies was the only way to reliably hatch eggs. The incubators in the final chapter are in their infancy -that's worth a read as well. In fact read the whole thing Simon its brilliant!
 
Ive accomplished it successfully in the past chris,developing eggs are a lot more robust than many people give them credit for. I wouldnt recommend a long Jolting car journey for them, or prolonged chilling, but to move them gently from an incubator in the house to a broody in the back garden shouldn't pose too many risks.
 
It would be interesting to see the results if you split the eggs. By the time you settle her on her own nest the eggs will be 7 days old but you can move them at any time in these circumstances. Hatching under broodies is not foolproof and eggs can get broken and occasionally a hen will leave the eggs but the usual cause of this is a build up of red mite in the broody box or an infestation of lice on the hen. Alternatively, you could try them all in the incubator and put them under the hen when they hatch. Either way she would not be wasted.

Back in the 1970's, my mate became a gamekeeper and used to hatch several hundred pheasants under broodies. They were housed in a line of broody boxes built on a bank with a dirt floor and hay for a nest; the door was opened once a day for the hens to pass the huge droppings, eat and drink. Each one had a string tied to it's leg which was hooked over a peg so the hens couldn't wander far or fight with the next door neighbour ! When they wanted to go back to their eggs, they were unhooked, they returned to the nest and the door was shut for another 24 hours. He developed his own strain of broodies, mostly Silky crosses and we did the rounds of all the poultry farmers weekly to buy up their broodies which were becoming harder to find as the Warrens had arrived which seldom went broody.
 
thanks both, they would be at our allotment and i already have a separate house/run all enclosed within the other birds run, its just sat there as i put it all in ready for when derek and his chums to go in there but due to there only being one 'derek' its become semi redundant for the time being.
the journey to the allotment is literally 3 minutes by car or a good 15 if walking, she is sitting in a communal nest box i have 3 and she only ever uses two of them.

i will set it all up tomorrow and do what you say and add the eggs on monday evening.

thanks again for the advice, i just want a more reliable hatch rate this time and i dont want to put all my eggs in one basket (excuse the pun).

we broke our egg record yesterday 9 eggs from 10 birds (previous record was 8) so we must be doing something right, todays count was lower though only 7.

chuck your comments about pheasant rearing makes for some interesting reading!

cheers
 
If only photography was as simple then as it is now, I could have come up with some interesting photos. Not a lot of money around to be spent on photgraphing broody hens.
 
What happened to the pheasant chicks when they hatched,Chuck? Were the hens then given a separate pen or did they stay tied up to keep the families apart? How were they protected from foxes?
And nowadays, I suppose there must be large breeding pens of pheasants somewhere, even though I expect the eggs are all hatched in incubators?
 
Most pheasants are reared from hatch inside under brooders, later to be transferred to release pens outside to bring out the wild.

Two methods with broodies: 1. more string woven into the original string up to 15, one for each chick (poult) and the chicks are then tied on with a sheep shank. This ensures the chicks don't wander too far from mother. They are much more mischevious than chicken chicks and will quickly revert to the wild and do a runner !

OR 2. the more usual method which is to transfer hen and chicks to a broody coop with pen. Many of these lined up on grass and moved every few days at first then daily later as they grew. All coops and pens identical and creosoted and repaired over each winter. Later the coops were moved to where they were going to be released and eventually opened up when they became independant. Broodies then taken back to their pen as they would be well back in lay by this stage, hopefully to go broody again next year.

Same type coops used to rear chicken chicks on grass range. Still in use today.
 
Marigold said:
What happened to the pheasant chicks when they hatched,Chuck? Were the hens then given a separate pen or did they stay tied up to keep the families apart? How were they protected from foxes?
And nowadays, I suppose there must be large breeding pens of pheasants somewhere, even though I expect the eggs are all hatched in incubators?
Click to expand...
Chuck said:
Most pheasants are reared from hatch inside under brooders, later to be transferred to release pens outside to bring out the wild.

Two methods with broodies: 1. more string woven into the original string up to 15, one for each chick (poult) and the chicks are then tied on with a sheep shank. This ensures the chicks don't wander too far from mother. They are much more mischevious than chicken chicks and will quickly revert to the wild and do a runner !Same type coops used to rear chicken chicks on grass range. Still in use today.
Click to expand...

And nobody twigged ! Perhaps someone will today ! :lol: :lol:
 
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