Last week some of the eggs our broody hen was setting on hatched!
About a week after we noticed that she was sitting on eggs, I candled some of the eggs & realized they weren’t developing. So, I swapped five of her eggs for five eggs from our coops that I thought should hatch. Three weeks later we have new babies. I love the process of hatching eggs in the incubator. But, it is so heartwarming to see a mama & her babies wandering around.
Mama hen is one of our free range chickens, so she wasn’t cooped up when she started sitting on eggs. Although my own motherly instinct wants to coop them up to protect them, I’m going to leave them to wander until a threat convinces me to do otherwise. It is interesting to watch how she’s taking care of them. These chicks almost don’t peep at all. I wonder if they know it’s safer for them to stay quiet.
