Should you let your hen brood and hatch chicken eggs?
Hatching Eggs : Backyard Farming
Letting Our Broody Hen Hatch Her Eggs and Raise Her Chicks on our Backyard Farm
I’ll never forget waking up on an early October morning to hear the undeniable sound of new life unbound—PEEP PEEP PEEP! I was shaking like a leaf with excitement. Our Easter Egger hen Lucille 2 (from the show Arrested Development, also we already had a Lucille, so it was perfect!) she had turned broody. Very broody. She had snuck her way in and taken up residence in the E-Coop: our mildly embarrassing term for the emergency coop—
all poultry keepers should have one or more!! Purchase or build an extra, usually smaller sized, enclosure for the INEVITABLE times you will have to separate one of your chickens for a host of reasons (illness, injury, quarantining a new addition).
She was the new member of the flock and my mate Joseph and I thought “let her stay where she is”—
She can catch a break from those savages (the rest of the flock)
This is a natural process
Our financial situation, our schedule, and our backyard chicken situation were all such that the addition of 2 more birds would not be a problem.
A lot of time went by. It seemed much longer than the standard 28 days of incubation an egg goes through. We had to keep feed and water containers right up to her face, as she refused to leave the nest box. We were growing concerned. We thought she was killing herself to sit on unfertilized eggs. We were THIS CLOSE to aborting the mission—no pun intended. Of the three eggs she sat on, two were born. My heart sang at the site!
ONE DAY OLD! ON A WARM BUT CRISP MORNING, THIS HEARTY SWEET ADORABLE BABY WAS BORN. LOOK HOW SWEET!
MAMA LUCILLE II IN THE “EMERGENCY COOP”. WATER PUSHED UP TO THE NESTBOX, AS SHE REFUSED TO PHYSICALLY SEPARATE FROM IT. THIS IS A LITTLE EXTREME, A LOT OF HENS WILL GET UP TO EAT AND DRINK. AT THE SAME TIME, THIS IS NOT UNCOMMON. THE SELF-HARM YOUR HEN IS WILLING TO ENDURE IS SOMETHING TO CONSIDER WHEN WEIGHING YOUR PROS AND CONS OF LETTING YOUR HEN HATCH A CLUTCH OF EGGS.
Of the two bitties born, one was the offspring of Lucille II the Easter Egger, and one was from a different hen. I don’t know if there is data about chicken mothers knowing their chicks, but the Cuckooed Maran hen was trying to get in the coop that morning—so maybe the other baby was hers?
LOOK AT THAT NASTY HISSIN’ SCARY MAMA! GOOD MAMA HEN PRAXIS!
Lucille II was the perfect mother, the perfect broody hen. Puffing her chest at us, hissing at us, striking to bite us if we tested her patience to its limit. The two little birds grew up adorably with their mother. Not a single health problem (thank you world). It was so adorable to watch them eating together, the babies all clumsy. (i wish we had video)
MAGIC ADORABLENESS
MAMA EASTER EGGER AND HER DAY OLD CHICK!
So far, the journey was perfect! Magical, Educational, Fun. Then things took a turn…when the two little babies grew up and into cockerels. Our male to female ratio was finally tipped the wrong way AKA too many males.
Cockerel: An Adolescent Male Chicken. A male baby chick grows up to be a cockerel. This is before he is a sexually matured adult, at which point, he becomes a rooster.
The rooster to hen ratio should be, at a minimum, 1:4. This rule is especially stringent for backyard chicken families.
if you don’t live on a good amount of land, where the chickens can spread out, the stakes get higher, the probability for bad outcomes goes up
CHEWY.COM is a Great Source for Supplies for Baby Chickens and Turkeys Especially. Things like perches, grit paper to line the floor, some supplements, treats, and medications. The List Goes On.
The Turning Point
The cockerel brothers became nuisances, then they became straight up terrorists. They drew blood on people. They made every single simple chore, like feeding the birds, a daunting obstacle course that no one wanted to participate in. They were vicious. I couldn’t ever figure out why—and i am usually awesome at that; animal behavior, as well as deductive reasoning/analyzing/diagnosing. Joseph and I wondered if perhaps, since they were raised by their chicken mother, and not a human: is that what made them so adverse to human interaction? or prone to being anti-social with humans? Did they perhaps encounter a trauma that we knew nothing about?
***If any of you have any ideas or input about why these two chickens grew up to be vicious to humans; I’d love to hear from you, I’d appreciate it so much, as this has perplexed me for years. comment below or on the FB Group or Email Me***
I will hold on to any animal for any reason, and even I knew that these birds HAD to find a new home…a place where they could be the bad-ass roosters they wanted to be. Re-homing an animal can be nearly impossible. We were lucky; we knew several people that had chickens, and a couple of them had land. The rooster bros went with Tony; a successful guy with his life in order, a genuine passion for chickens specifically, and checked off all the requirements for adding two new males to a flock. Before Joseph befriended Tony, I had the cockerel/rooster brothers on Craigslist for quite a while. A lot of people have roosters on Craigslist. It sucks. Unwanted roosters, being given away for free, etc. Its a serious issue with not a lot of answers—unless you’re willing and able to cull members of your flock (for slaughter, for food, or for segregated life.) I was not. Many are not.
I can’t imagine the cognitive dissonance, the shock and awe, of every generation before us, if they saw us desperately trying to home roosters for free because we couldn’t keep them as pets/property dwellers. WOW, ey? Usually, that would be the time to make chicken soup!
If the birds would have been hens, i bet we would have kept them. It really sucked, i WANTED to keep them; especially because they were the offspring of the birds i loved so dearly. But they really were monsters. i held out for as long as i could. Good News is that they were on Cloud 9 at Tony’s Place! Yaaaay!
Lucille II’s Son. HE WAS GORGEOUS! These photos are from a cellphone from 2010. He had laced patterned feathers. And look at how dainty and small and feminine he is! I would have loved to have kept him. His brother from another mother, was growing into a big broiler type chicken.
In Memory of Those Sweet Evil Babies
Breeding Your Own Birds is Amazing Though…
Before they were born, i hadn’t even THOUGHT of “making” more birds through breeding.
Then i thought about breeding! And how awesome it would be to either make our own hybrid with chosen qualities, or how fun it would be to have mutt chickens that would eventually show some amazing plumage, pattern and color! But, i respect and hope to one day participate in the ALBC, or American Livestock Breeds Conservatory, so much that I’d quite likely not do the mutt thing. I would love to get registered with a chicken breed on the critical or endangered list, and help keep it going. I also realized how cool it would be to keep our “poultry operation” going—especially if we were going to get serious with it—without having to purchase more birds. This would keep the farm much more “biosecure.”
The series of management practices that are employed to prevent the importation of infectious agents from entering a farm is termed biosecurity.
Sorry I got a little off track…
In Conclusion
NO! DO NOT DO IT! Unless!
YOU HAVE LAND
AND/OR
A SOLID BACK-UP PLAN ALREADY IN PLACE!
Joseph and I thought we were in a place in which we could take on two more birds “no problem”. No one would have expected the outcome: of two psycho-killer male birds—BUT EITHER WAY, WE WERE WRONG. It was super fun to watch them grow up but…
If you do not live on acreage, large land, or if you have no escape route in case events take a turn; i DO NOT suggest that you let your hen sit on her eggs. (imagine being a backyard chicken family, and your hen hatches 4 roosters!!)
I have so much more to say…Perhaps another day 😊
A HANDY LITTLE PROS AND CONS CHART I PUT TOGETHER.
Important & Educational
1. ALBC | Now The LC—The Livestock Conservatory
They’re involved in keeping breeds and heritage breeds from becoming extinct. They have one of the BEST OUTREACH programs I’ve ever seen and their RESOURCES are endless and Top-Notch. They’ve been a part of my guidance since day one.
2. NPIP—National Poultry Improvement Plan.
3. Biosecurity Practical Approach | Penn State
Biosecurity is a set of practices employed to prevent the importation of infectious organisms into a herd or flock, and their transmission between animals.
4. Biosecurity Fundamentals | Penn State
5. Gail Damerow is one of THE TOP AUTHORITIES IN THE WORLD ALIVE TODAY ON ANYTHING POULTRY! Her books (library here) have guided me well throughout my years. And of course, this thorough author (🤘🐓💖) has a book just on this subject! Amazing! I wish i had known about it back then! 😆🐣
