What an emotional day! We have 2 hens that have gone broody. A black hen in our chicken coop and a brown hen in the hay shed. We were getting worried about the black hen as she had been sitting on her eggs for over a month and nothing was happening. She was starting to lose weight and looks quite unkempt, so we decided to remove all the eggs from under her so she could take care of herself. We were sure there was nothing happening in the eggs, but when we cracked them open, 3 out of the 7 had little embryos forming. Although they were little more than large blood spots with veins coming out, it still brought a tear to my eye and made me feel extremely guilty. I’m not sure why they were not further along since the normal hatching time is 21 days. I think that some of the eggs were rolling out from under her or the other chickens were pushing their way into her nest and laying eggs as well. I think it was really for the best as now the hen can put some weight on and get back into good health. We have decided that if any hens go broody in the future, they will be moved to a separate area.
The good news (as you can probably tell from the photo) is that the brown hen in the hayshed hatched her first chick today! A few hours after removing the eggs from the black hen, I went to check on the brown one. I lifted her up so I could count how many eggs she was sitting on and out popped a little white chick! I was very excited as this is the first baby to be born on Wannabe Farms - at least the first domestic baby :). Thankfully we have finished the chicken coop (except for a few finishing touches) so we moved baby, mom and eggs down to a little room in the coop that we had built to hold the feed. The hen seems to have settled in quite nicely and the photo above was taken from inside the room. The timing was just right as we will be getting our new shipment of hay in a few days and would have had to move her anyway. She is sitting on 15 or 16 eggs - one of which had a hole pecked through, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another chick peeking from under her wing at this very moment!