A questions about a broody chicken?

Question

ok, so basically one of my hens is broody, but as the chickens have no c**k we desided to give her fertile eggs which she is incubating. every day we go down to the hutch and remove the 6 infertile eggs and leave the fertile ones for her to incubate. but when we remove her off the eggs its almost like one of them will bully her to sit on the eggs with a peck does this mean that they will heart the chicks when they hatch ? or will it be fine cheers

Answer 1

that is a very good question,I know with my tiels ,which are birds the other c**k kept going over to the nest box and even tried to get the hen at one point,and actually he may have,but getting back to your case,the other hens probably want to sit as well and in most,i say most cases ,the natural instinct to mother takes over unless you have an overly aggressive hen ,in which case I would just remove that hen for now.Good luck.

Answer 2

You might want to consider moving the chickens in the pen to another temporary pen until the hen hatches the chicks. You don't want to move the hen, because it might disturb her. Chickens tend to be aggressive, and leaving the mother hen and her chicks in the pen will probably drastically reduce the chance of survival of the chicks. Once the chicks are hatched, move the mother hen and chicks to another pen and you can return the chickens back to their old pen. Usually, you want to wait 3-6 months before putting the mother hen and her chicks back in with the other chickens.