There were six eggs, but so far we’ve only seen four chicks. I didn’t want to bother her. Have you ever seen a look that said more clearly ‘bug off’?! I’ll leave her alone. It’s so fun to see how devoted broody hens are to the idea of hatching those eggs, and their reward is having a little brood of chicks to take care of. It’s one of my very favorite things 🙂
Look at those little fluffy-kins! They are all Big Blue’s babys. Now we’ll see what happens when you mix a blue cochin with buff orpingtons, white cochin, or whatever the heck that black hen is.
Update – Momma took them out of the nest this morning and there were SIX little fluffybutts following her – three grey and three black!
Steff Does Stuff! 
Love this! 100% success rate, too. Yay!
I went down to the feed store yesterday and bought two chicks to keep the single chick company and help her integrate into the flock later. I gave the hen 3 eggs, but only 1 hatched. We cracked them and found one was just a stinky yolk and the other was a halfgrown chick in putrid fluid. bleh! I always dislike peeking, just in case there was a viable chick and we ended up killing it. :-&
~Lisa
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Last year when we only got 3 out of 13 eggs (because of other hens adding to the nest and disturbing her) my chicken mentor told me to just throw the unhatched eggs out into the chicken yard so they'd break and the adults would clean them up – gross!
I have another broody hen I think I'm going to put in the other tractor and let her hatch some chicks too. It's addictive fun seeing little baby chicks 🙂
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