Night queen & her chicks - Our first broody hen
In August’s installment of What’s Pekin’ I’ll be talking about myself, Night Queen, and my experience hatching my first baby chicks! I am so excited to give you new mother hens some advice on broodiness and natural egg hatching.
One day at the end of May, a feeling started coming over me that urged me to start sitting on my eggs for long periods of time throughout the day and night. I had never felt this way before but I soon realized that my hormones were surging and my body was ready to hatch some baby chicks. For egg laying hens, when our hormones rise and we suddenly have a desire to start sitting on our eggs to hatch chicks is called “going broody.” This is something natural that we just can’t ignore and we will sit on our eggs until we get our babies! Even though I wanted to sit on my eggs for as long as I possibly could throughout the day I still made sure to care for myself by getting a drink of water and a peck of food. So for you new chicken parents out there, yes I am talking about you humans, don’t worry, we won’t starve ourselves just because we are broody.
That first night my humans came out to put my sisters and i away for the night and collect our eggs and they saw me sitting in the nesting box. I noticed that they thought this behavior was odd because we all usually stayed on our roosts at night. They continued their routine of collecting the eggs but I really did not want them to take my new throne I had put together! Unfortunately this would become a routine for the next few days until my humans brought me a gift.
From what I could understand in their human talk, they were able to find a local on a chicken facebook page who had fertilized eggs and was nice enough to give them for me to hatch! See, what I didn’t know is that if the eggs were fertilized or not, my natural instincts still told me to sit on those eggs until they hatched! For me it was pretty much a lost cause until my humans helped me. Since we dont have a rooster friend to fertilize our eggs there was no chance that any of mine or my sisters eggs would hatch. Fun fact, Egg laying hens still lay eggs even if they are not fertilized. We are just like humans but instead of dropping an egg once a month we drop one almost everyday!
Anyways, one day my humans brought me 6 beautiful white eggs for me to sit on. I was basically a chicken surrogate! I treated these eggs as my own and sat on them for about 21 days which is usually how long it takes to hatch baby chicks. Just like that my babies started hatching!
It took quite a long time, almost a whole day for them to hatch and I am sure that it took a lot of energy for them to break through those shells. Unfortunately things dont always work out and I did loose one of the chicks while it was hatching but I was able to successfully hatch 2 of my adopted babies! Most of the time about half the eggs are duds (they may be fertilized or not) so it can be a crap shoot as to which ones actually hatch.
Once my new little babies hatched I was able to take them under my wings and bring them out of the nesting box and into the main part of our chicken coop. Here our humans provided us with fresh food and water where I taught my babies how to eat and drink! I also had to make sure to keep them protected from my sisters.
After a few days, a very sad day came. The day I had to return my babies to their real mom. My humans came out to the coop and took my babies and put them in a cardboard box I could tell they were so excited to see my babies and bring them home.
Trusting my humans, I let them take my chicks, but the minute they were separated from me they started to cheep. They knew I was their momma! My humans started walking away and I couldn’t not help but follow them all the way to the front yard to say goodbye to my babies.
Once they got back from their journey they told me that my baby chicks had happily been taken back by their mother and had 20 other siblings to play with at their true home. Hearing this made me so happy and knew I had done my job.
Salt and pepper on their way back home.
For a few days after that I would still go into the coop as if my babies were still there but each day it got easier and easier. On the third day I rejoined my sisters with our daily foraging, digging and chasing bugs.
Life was finally back to normal.
A note from my humans:
The only way that we could figure out how to treat our hens broodiness was to let her hatch chicks, or put her in a cage and allow her to cool off for about three days. We felt the latter was inhumane and unnatural so we decided to get her eggs to sit on. I would say it was probably one of the most exciting experiences we have had with our chickens on our homestead. Getting to see baby chicks hatch and our hens maternal instincts kick in was something magical to watch.
If we were to do this again, it would be best for the chicks and their momma to have a separate place to stay. Chickens establish a dominance hierarchy and this can mean lots of abuse for the little chicks and their mother.
