| Victoria has been broody since the day she laid her first egg. Broody means she wants to sit on her eggs and hatch them. Or, hell, anyone's eggs. Or a wooden egg. Or an empty nest. She wasn't picky.
For a chicken owner who wants eggs, broodiness is an obnoxious trait. When a chicken goes broody, she stops laying. To make a chicken stop being broody, you can either bother her until she gives up, or you can let her hatch eggs. Some say you can even put day-old chicks under her and she will think she hatched them (more on this below) and will stop being broody.
Usually, we would just remove Victoria from the nest several times a day. When my roommate did this, he would place her far from the coop so she would have to walk all the way across the yard to get back on the nest. I just set her down next to the coop. Typically, after a week or so of this, she'd stop being broody for a little bit. It takes a week or so after a chicken has been broody before they start laying again.
For months now, I've said that I was going to let Victoria hatch chicks once the weather cools down. It seems cruel to fight nature so much when this poor hen wants nothing more than to hatch some chicks. We don't have a rooster, so our eggs are not fertile, but it's easy to buy fertile eggs on Craigslist. What I didn't want was for Victoria to sit on the nest while it was 90+F outside. She's a big, fluffy girl and not terribly equipped for dealing with heat.
In late July or early August, Victoria went broody again. I took her off the nest several times a day. While I was in Bolivia, my roommate did the same. When I returned home, she was still broody. I continued taking her off the nest, to no avail. Victoria wanted nothing more than to sit on her nest.
As I've said, it's REALLY hot here in the summer. I didn't want her on the nest in the heat. But despite my best efforts, she was determined to sit on the nest all day, every day anyway. Would it really be that different if she had some eggs under her?
I found a nearby woman who sells fertile eggs and I went over to buy a dozen - half barred rock, half black australorp. (After my asshole rooster experience, I'm getting all dual purpose breeds so that any males who piss me off can be eaten.) The woman had chicks hatching that day, and she suggested I take the hatching eggs and put those under Victoria so that she would get off the nest almost immediately. I agreed.
I brought 5 eggs home that would hatch that day. All had already pipped (made their first hole in the eggshell) and all were peeping when you tapped the egg and held it to your ear. I put them under Victoria.
A few hours later, I found a beautiful black baby chick roaming around the coop, and another chick that had apparently hatched and suffocated under Victoria. Victoria was very good at sitting on her eggs, but had no idea what happened next, it seemed. Throughout the day, we had a total of four baby chicks who died while hatching, and the one who lived. Victoria, when she noticed the chick at all, would peck at it. She was rejecting the chicks.
A quick look online showed that this sometimes happens. Hens have a bit of an internal clock and if they haven't been incubating eggs for long enough, then they sometimes know the chicks you put under them aren't theirs and they reject them. And some hens just have no idea that those eggs they were sitting on were supposed to hatch someday and they reject the chicks even if the chicks are theirs. (The woman who sold me the eggs told me this happened to her once.)
I took the surviving chick back to the woman who sold it to me, and exchanged it for 12 fertile eggs. I placed them in the nest and put Victoria on top of them. She was as happy as a clam. Then she sat, and sat, and sat.
I was worried about the heat, but it seemed that she was doing OK. She was getting off daily to eat and drink and go to the bathroom. What's more, the weather forecasts for the past several days have projected 90s when what we've gotten has been 100s. So I didn't realize it was so hot until after the fact.
After the first day of 100+F heat, Victoria got off her nest for a break and a snack. She seemed fine. But yesterday, after a second miserable day of extreme heat, I came home to find her dead on her eggs. The eggs were still warm, so I brought them to the woman who sold them to me immediately. She candled them and found that 8 of the 12 were developing. Those are now in an incubator, projected to hatch on Monday, September 19.
I've learned, from a fellow chicken owner, that if your chicken has heat stroke, you should place her in a lukewarm bath and circulate the water around her, especially under her wings. After a bit, you can lower the water temperature, but placing a heat stroking chicken in cold water can shock them and kill them.
I feel rather responsible for poor Victoria, since chickens seem somewhat naturally programmed to win Darwin Awards by incubating eggs til they die, and I should've realized the danger of the heat and monitored her and cared for her better. Instead, I went to the beach. |
