By Holly Kozelsky
When we returned from vacation, we noticed that the silver hen and the gold-and-white hen were taking turns sitting on the eggs.
The flock was down to just four chickens, so we had decided that after vacation, we’d buy some biddies (female chicks) and raise them up. Apparently, thank goodness, the hens also decided that the flock had gotten too small, and they had taken matters into their own hands.
Or into their own nesting box, we should say.
That was a relief. If the hens raised their own chicks, everyone should get along peacefully like one big happy family. If they weren’t brooding, we’d have to raise the chicks on our own. We don’t have a separate outbuilding with electricity in which to do it, so our arrangement was to raise them in a large plastic tub which we set in the bathtub, with a heat lamp hanging above.
Raising chicks in the house is fun and the chicks are cute for the first 2 weeks. Then, as the chicks get older and larger and able to jump higher, it turns into an increasing nightmare until they are fully grown and able to be taken out of the house and put with the other chickens.
Sure, we complain, but we love the country life, and you do what it takes.
Pullets (that’s the word for female chicks and chickens that aren’t yet full-grown hens) cannot be put in with a flock. Hens would turn on them, instinctively protecting the flock from intruders who they perceive don’t belong. The pecking order would rear its ugly head as the hens pecked the newcomers, possibly to death.
There are a lot of steps to introducing new pullets into a flock. One of the steps is to have a separate chicken run for the pullets, so that the old hens and the pullets could get used to each other without contact. Another step is that when the pullets are grown, you put one or two of the old hens in with them (but never put one or two pullets in with the old hens) for gentle introductions, but you still have no better resort than just hoping for the best.
Also, biddies need to be kept at 95 degrees during their first week. Each week, as their bodies and feathers grow, their environmental temperature is lowered by 5 degrees. There are a lot of calculations involved for the first 2 or 3 months of raising chickens.
Thus, we were somewhat excited about while also somewhat dreading getting new chicks to raise ourselves.
Imagine our delight in returning from vacation to discover that the hens had the same idea and were planning on raising chicks all on their own.
Common backyard hens don’t go broody too often. The last time one of ours did was 3 or 4 years ago. That’s why this timing was an extra coincidence.
When a hen goes broody, she sits on the eggs nonstop, except for getting up only once a day to eat a lot, drink a lot and eliminate a lot. She does all that quickly to get back to her future babies. Going broody takes a lot out of a hen, both physically and, presumably, mentally.
Any hen who goes broody will sit on anyone’s eggs, the other hens’ as well as her own. In fact, as she is brooding, other hens will hop up right next to her to lay an egg, which the brooding hen will accept.
A brooding hen, like a mother hen with her chicks, holds her wings a little further out at her side and fluffs up her feathers so that she is one big cozy puffball. It is very cute and makes you want to grab her up and cuddle her, but she is so protective she would respond viciously.
The brooding was a mystery. Our pet-sitter, Davis Scott, did not know the logistics of brooding, so he didn’t recognize it at its start and so did not know which day to mark as Day One. He theorized that it may have been a Wednesday. Thus, I’d count to the Wednesday 3 weeks out as the hatch day.
However, I also had to add some more days to the end of that, because if the Wednesday start were not correct, the chicks inside the eggs would need more days to develop before we gave up on them.
Here’s another catch: We didn’t know which hen was the mama! The white-and-gold hen and the silver hen would trade off. When one got off, the other would get on. That didn’t matter much, though.
Once or twice no hen would be on the eggs for half an hour or more. That would bring on the worry that the hens had abandoned the eggs or, if they still meant to brood, the chicks were not getting the hen’s body temperature they needed to develop inside the eggs.
However, when the days were super hot, the developing chicks inside the eggs would have smothered.
After a few days, the gold and white hen had completely stopped taking shifts with the eggs, so it was all the silver hen. Mama Hen was getting weaker and weaker by the day, from her intensive, selfless brooding routine, so we could not let her brood too far past the 21 days.
We excitedly counted down the days to the Wednesday of the expected hatch. We ran outside in the morning to check, and back to the coop after work and school to check.
Nothing.
We waited another day.
And then another.
With the suspense high, we’ll say good-bye for now, and give you Part 2 next week.
