Should you let your hens hatch chicks?

So if you are a rural homesteader keeping chickens, this is a question you will probably ask yourself at one time or another. I know I did.  I had two Buff Orpingtons who went broody on me on a semi-annual basis, and always wondered how it would be to let one of them hatch a clutch of eggs. All the chickens I'd raised to that point were brooder babies, and I was always under the impression that letting a mother hen do all the work meant no work or me.  So here is an honest look at my experiences, with the pros and cons openly discussed.  Remember, the following is based on my opinion only, so others may feel differently.

Is it, on the whole, easier?  The answer to that is a resounding NO. It is just difficult in a different way.  Sure, you never have to worry about the brooder temperature, barn fires from heat lamps or stuff like that, but you have other worries.  First, you have to make sure your brooding hen is kept isolated from the other hens, or its possible there will be competition for the eggs, and even egg-icide. (is that even a word?) My New Hampshire Red, Ginger, got into Ellen's eggs early on and broke all but two of the first clutch.  She's not an egg breaker OR eater so I think this was just a bit of Darwin-type natural selection competition going on.  (And I won't even re-hash the issue of Ellen herself turning on the two late-hatches in her clutch.  That meant that, unexpectedly, I ended up with two babies in the brooder and two under a live hen.  Not what I had anticipated, but it can happen.)

But what that competition from other hens means is that you may need to construct a coop within a coop for the broody hen -- or put her in a specially-constructed brooding area of your garage, barn, spare room, etc. -- to keep the her and her eggs safe while she's sitting and of course once they hatch into chicks. I luckily have a small coop, which we owned before we got the large chicken mansion the ladies currently live in, so that part worked out OK.

Ellen and babies in the condo.

But here is the other thing....now you are feeding, watering, cleaning and caring for two separate batches of chickens. Double the work, easily.

One other thing is that once your sitting hen has been isolated from her flock-mates for several weeks, she will have to re-establish her place in the pecking order.  Since Ellen has always been Head Hen, this only took about 15 minutes, and oddly enough it was the hen in the lowest spot on the pecking order who challenged her, but for me it was a stressful 15 minutes, full of fighting, comb-pulling, feather-grabbing, mounting, and pecking.  Luckily Ellen's babies were sequestered elsewhere, or there could have been a fatality there.

Then of course there is also the issue of the sex of your chicks.  Right now I am not sure if I have one rooster and three hens, or three roosters and one hen. The black bantams are extremely hard to sex, but obviously I'm hoping for hens. Brooding hens, of course hatch a "straight run" of chicks, where there is a 50/50 chance of the chicks being either sex, whereas at the Feed Store, there's something like a 90 percent certainty the chick you bring home is, in fact, a female. Luckily I already have a home for ONE rooster (at the winery), but if there are three of them I am not sure what we will do. Dine on Cornish Game Hen I guess.

Time will tell whether the naturally raised chicks are any better for having been raised by a real chicken mother. Ellen has been an excellent mother and has taught them a lot, however, the two chicks I have in the brooder seem to have learned the same things on their own -- scratching, dust bathing, etc.. They are also a lot tamer because they've been handled a lot more. But I'm open to seeing their differences once they're all integrated.

Claire and Otis in the brooder.

So was it worth it? Well, I am happy to have gotten a good education by doing this. But as to whether or not I would do it again, the answer is probably no. It IS nice to know a hen can survive the starvation and deprivation they put themselves through when they are broody, but the whole isolation thing has proved complex and a little more demanding of my time than I honestly anticipated, so our next batch of hens will probably come from the Feed Store and I will rest easy, in the near-certainty that they are all hens and therefore have a lifelong home here at the old homestead.

Chickens are coming along

All four chicks and Ellen. The two she did not accept are separated for their safety.

So this is the stage when the fuzzy baby chicklets become awkward adolescents. Feathers are halfway grown in, there are odd fuzzy remnants sticking out of necks and on backs, and the play-acting as adults begins, which is pretty cute to see.  It's the beginning of the end of chick-dom for these little ones.  Soon they will join the flock as juveniles and learn their place -- probably at the bottom of the pecking order in the beginning. 

But since I am probably not keeping any of these lovelies and will instead give them back to the couple who the eggs belonged to, it's also the beginning of the end of my time with them.  From the two that Ellen is successfully mothering to the two that she rejected and became brooder babies, I've enjoyed having chicks around again.  

But while I'd love to keep one or two for myself, the fact is I already give away far more eggs than we eat, and so from a practical standpoint there's really no point in adding to the flock.  But I'm happy Ellen got to become a mother at long last, and also happy that so far, all four of these little lovelies are doing great.  My guess is we have three hens and a 'roo, but I'm not positive about that so only time will tell. 

This is the chick Ellen attacked as it was born. I call her Claire. She has a lovely disposition.

Ellen's Black. No name yet.

Ellen's black and white chick.  Pretty sure he's a he.

My little black, Claire's best friend.  

A rejection and an injury

So Ellen's late eggs finally hatched yesterday (she already has two three-day old chicks from the first hatch), but she rejected the chicks, even going so far as to attack one of them -- the little buff chick.  Luckily I came home from work in time to save them both, and now they are brooder babies.  I will probably put them in my neighbors' brooder this weekend with several other chicks they are raising, since a flock socialization from the get-go is always a good thing.

I'm thankful I was able to save these little ones, especially the one Ellen attacked.  That one seemed on the brink of death when I brought her inside. It turns out she just needed some love, including water. food and most importantly, a warm place to nestle. Hopefully her wounds will heal in time and she can go on to live the life of a happy hen or roo. 

I've begun thinking I should re-name Ellen...maybe Joan Crawford might be more appropriate? 

Hatch Day!

Woke up to this today!

Today was Hatch Day, day 21 of Ellen's incubation of some of our neighbor's fertile eggs.  Both eggs hatched, right on schedule, the buff colored one a few hours older than the little black bantam. Needless to say, it was very exciting, actually more exciting than incubating them artificially because it is such a joy to see mother and babies interacting.  Ellen is, as I predicted, an absolutely wonderful mother.

And came home to this later on!

She still has four eggs under her, which are not due to hatch until Thursday or Friday, so I don't have much hope for them since she is off the nest quite a bit now, clucking and chasing after her already-hatched ones.  That is how it is with chickens (and humans as well).  Once the babies arrive it's hard to focus anything else. Its certainly hard for me to focus on much today; I keep sticking my head inside the coop to visit with mama and her small brood.

Candling

Yesterday I candled all the eggs Ellen was sitting on, and with the exception of one that someone from my brood smuggled in under the radar, all the eggs were fertile and growing. (Hens sneak their own eggs into a brooder's clutch regularly, when she goes off for some food and water for a few moments. Pretty sneaky and clever....biological motherhood with none of the work!)

Candling eggs is a time-honored way of checking fertility so you don't have eggs sitting under the hen and going bad if they are not fertile. In the old days, I suppose homesteaders actually did use candles to do this, but to me that seems a bit risky.  The modern homesteader now uses a flashlight for the same purpose.  It's very important to do it in a windowless room or walk-in closet, because the first week things can be hard to see. The first week the eggs are incubating, the only thing you will be looking for is a small dark spot with a series of blood vessels streaming away from it.  

Photos courtesy of backyardchickens.com

As the egg develops, however, if you candle again you can expect to see a beating heart, spinal cord and even movement.  As the egg gets close to hatching, the inside will appear completely dark, as the baby chick is taking up almost all the space.

I first did this when incubating chicken eggs in my classroom when I was a second grade teacher.  It was great fun showing the children the miracle of how life develops, but hatching eggs using an incubator is also hard work, as I had to be Mama Hen and manually turn the eggs several times a day.  Having Miss Ellen sitting on these is much easier. (Well, for me, anyway. I can't speak for Miss Ellen.)

A fertile time

Things are going like gangbusters here on the homestead right now, especially where fertility is concerned. I am pleased to report that Ellen is sitting on a small clutch of fertilized eggs which I got from the neighbors across the street.  They lost several hens at once to old age and disease about the same time that Ellen went broody for the third time in her three-year life, and so I took four eggs from their non-broody hens and put them underneath Ellen who is happily clucking and mothering them under her fluffy wings.  

We will see if this pans out; if these eggs hatch I am guessing it should be around May 15 or so (chicken eggs incubate 21 days) and I would love to see Ellen become a mother in her golden years. All the other times she went broody I had to break her of it, meaning she did not get to do what she most wanted to do, which in those cases was hatch a batch of sterile eggs, a pretty useless endeavor for something as energy-sapping as brooding is.  We shall see!

Mama in-waiting.

The other fertilization project is going on outside, in the vegetables.  I have some peppers and eggplant with clear nitrogen deficiencies, but before I start monkeying around with organic fertilizer I am going to try a gentle, natural nitrogen booster, which is our own urine, diluted at a 1 to 10 ratio and used to water the plants around their bases.  I do not use this on anything where we'd be eating the crop either from or on the ground, but with peppers and eggplants this is not a concern. (And it's probably OK to use for other crops like lettuce, I'm just concerned about splash-age and don't want to risk it. 

Urine great shape, vegetables! Or will be soon.

So hopefully we will have green vegetables...and maybe even some chicks running around here soon.  Just two of the reasons spring is my favorite season. It's all about fertility...fertile earth, fertile animals, and hopefully fertile crops.