Gold & Silver Forum - Hatching Eggs

I've been hatching some chicken eggs lately and thought my experiences might benefit others.

As I have noted elsewhere, it turns out that broodiness has been bred out of many strains from commercial hatcheries. Most of my chickens come from Ideal and were no exceptions, not even the Rhode Island Reds which at one time were known to go broody. If you end up with these kinds of hens I've read that the trick is confinement. You place them in a cage that gives them just enough room to eat, drink and poop but keeps them on the eggs. Sounds like my hens would hate that so I haven't and probably won't try it.

I do have a few bantams I got as an experiment in caged poultry for urban dwellers. They were from Ideal too, but were some kind of mixed mongrels. I usually use their eggs for cooking but I neglected to gather them for a couple days and noticed the two hens were wanting to sit. I've ready about using bantams to hatch heavy breed eggs so I thought I'd give it a try.

I didn't really have readymade nesting boxes available so I improvised. I placed my first hen in a 10 gallon aquarium(no water, of course) that I found in the woods. I put pine litter down on the bottom and cut a door in an overturned plastic flowerpot for a nesting box. Three weeks later I got a 100% hatching rate.

I set up my other hen in the dustbath box that is always in their cage. She and the rooster had knocked out all the ground corncob I normally used in the box but I figured I stick the eggs under her anyway and see how she does. She was a dedicated sitter but with no bedding she couldn't keep the eggs from rolling out from underneath her so after a while I bought some more litter and added it. Around this time she stopped sitting for a day or two because she had been disturbed.

After the first hen's eggs had hatched I waited a whole nother week but suspected that if the eggs under the second hen ever were viable they probably died when she stopped sitting. I candled the eggs with a 3 watt LED flashlight in a dark room and only one had something that looked vaguely chick-like in it, the others just seemed to have an air bubble or nothing.

Fearing rotten eggs I did a float test and the egg floated. Rotten for sure I thought so I took them outside to crack them open and see what was going on. The first egg I opened was the one that had no development at all, it was definately dead as a doornail. I figured this for sure meant the rest were so the next one I opened was the one that looked vaguely chick-like. Unfortunately there was a viable chick in it but it was not old enough to possible survive outside the now broken egg so I had to dispatch it. I took that for a anomaly and opened one of the eggs that seemed to have only an air bubble, instead it had a very early development chick in it, didn't even look like a bird or have bones. I'd have dispatched it too but there was no clear vitals to attack and I wasn't even really sure that it had survived considering how far behind the other chick it was in development. In for a penny, in for a pound so I figured I'd better open the other egg so I have a good idea of what's going on in this process. In the second egg that appeared to have only an air bubble I found the most mature chick, unfortunately also had no chance of surviving outside the egg.

Here are the lessons learned.

* Viable, developing eggs will float. If it doesn't have the rotten egg smell yet don't discount it.

* Candling is a good indicator but what looks like an air bubble from an older unincubated egg can actually be a chick in an incubated egg.

* The hens don't mind sitting on big eggs but will reject any "oddball" eggs that aren't the same size or color as the majority. My wife was able to defeat this by using food coloring to make a green egg from an Ameraucana very similar to the brown egg from a Rhode Island Red.

* Eggs are very hardy. The first batch I hatched at 100% had been sitting in the nesting box in 100 degree heat for a couple days before being placed under a hen.

Now I can make chicks for free instead of having to buy them, no artificial incubator and no reliance on electricity. Even if you have to buy the feed at $12-$13/50lbs you can grow eggs and meat for less than you can buy an equivalent product from the grocery store. There is a cost associated with the housing but if you do it right it should be a one-time expense. Consider it a meat and egg generator, consider the feed its fuel or grow your own.