An Un"eggs"pected Adventure

We discovered her not budging. Our Black Australorp hen had become broody. This is a natural instinct that happens to chickens when they want to hatch some eggs. We do have a rooster so our eggs are most likely fertilized. We decided that if this hen was that committed, we would let nature take its course.

We read that sometimes broody hens won't make it the full 21 days that are required for an egg to reach hatching. So far, this hen was very dedicated. The original clutch of eggs was only seven but we noticed that the other hens were continually adding more eggs to the nest. In the end, there were twenty-two eggs altogether.

We marked when day 21 would be on our calendar and we watched intensely. When I went out to check, I discovered a little chick in the nesting box next to the mama hen but it had been killed. We don't know if the other hens were guilty of this offense but there was definitely evidence on the mother hen's beak. We had read that sometimes, for whatever reason, the mother hen will kill her chicks. I wasn't going to put up with this so, we carefully collected all the eggs from under the hen and placed them in an incubator we had borrowed. I wasn't super hopeful that anything would happen, but at least I was at peace knowing we had tried all we could to help these little chicks.

Four days went by and I was losing hope. My children would not let me toss out the eggs so we waited another day...and it worked! One little chick hatched!

A day later, another little chick hatched!

Two days after that, a third and finally a fourth. It was so neat being able to watch three of the four chicks break out of their eggs. The kids were so intrigued!

I was completely surprised that we saw any success because we were not turning the eggs or doing anything scientifically correct and the eggs were long past the 21 day mark. It has been a fun and exciting adventure and the chicks are cute and fluffy as can be!