Eggs are hatching at the farm!
We’ve had a mother hen sitting on a nest now for a couple of weeks. She’s almost a year old and suddenly just showed an interest in being a mother. Taryn and I wanted to see how much the mother hen would do without our help, so we just cleaned the nest box and added a few more eggs under her and let her do her thing.
At around the same time she started sitting on her nest we received a fresh batch of babies from McMurray Hatchery. We used chicken wire to section off a third of the coop for these baby chicks. When we built the coop last summer, we made multiple human and animal access doors so that we would be able to divide up the inside and still be able to get in and do what we needed to do.
Today when we went out to check on those new birds- which are just getting into that awkward half feather half fluff technicolor dream coat stage; we noticed a small puff ball curled up next to the grain feeder. Clearly this was a new baby, no more than 24 hours old. We scooped up the little one and dipped its beak in water (since chickens are not born knowing how to drink) and it started peeping up a storm. The baby was able to squeeze through the small holes in the wire wall and into the area where to new birds had food and water, but it was unlikely that it would be able to find its way back to its mother. So we brought it back to her and she nudged it under her wing.
As most of you know, I’m a sucker for free stuff, and if it’s on craigslist I’m all over it. So a couple of months back when I saw a free rabbit hutch 30 minutes from my work I went and got it. I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d use it for, but if it’s free it’s me and I don’t turn down nothing but my collar. It was one of those, “I’m not home but it’s in the backyard, just go back and take it” type of pick-ups, which always make me feel like there’s a chance I’m stealing from someone as part of some vindictive neighbor’s plot. It’s a normal home-made rabbit hutch that someone, probably a small child, scribbled “Hoptimus’s House” across the front of… the plot thickens…
In any event, we moved the mother, her baby, and her eggs into it this afternoon so she could have some space with her babies. A lot of books and articles advise doing this right when she starts sitting on the eggs, but we were curious what would happen if we just let her do her thing. In general she would leave the nest most mornings for a little while to eat and drink, spend most of the day on the nest, and pop out again at night for some more water and grain. Sometimes while she was out, another hen, usually the same one, would go in and spend some time sitting. I never noticed any aggression when the main hen returned, the surrogate would just get up and leave the coop.
Since we’ve moved her into the rabbit hutch at least one more baby has hatched and she’s in increasingly good spirits. A few of the eggs were wiggling and cracking as Taryn was putting them in the cardboard box nest we put in the hutch.
A mama hen pulling an egg underneath her.
Recently hatched baby poking its head out
We have two roosters that are brothers and keep the girls in line. The hen is missing those feathers from her back as a result of an overactive libido
The rear door of our nest boxes. Before being relocated to the hutch, she occupied the center box. Each nest box is 12"x12"x12"
After we relocated her to the hutch, we moved grain crumbles and water close to the nest, so her and her babies could acess it without having to move too far.
Our free rabbit hutch from craigslist