With the price of food rising and don’t know if or when it might go down we have tried to find ways to increase our food supply on our property. One way was to make sure that we can have a reliable source of protein … We have raised chickens for the past 15 years and enjoyed the rewards of the hens laying eggs and have hatched a few eggs over the years in our incubator, (Providing that we had a rooster at the time) but that required the use of electricity and I wanted to figure out a way to hatch the eggs without using grid electricity … One thought was to use an old electric water heater using solar panels to provide electricity and replacing the heating elements in the tank with 24V elements to create heat to hatch the eggs….. But 5 days ago for the first time, we have a broody hen sitting on a clutch of eggs … She has not let any of the other hens in the nesting box where they usually lay eggs It looks like she is determined not to move. My wife and I have created a new enclosure and plan to move her and the eggs tonight hoping that she will continue to sit on her clutch of eggs. This was great, We have a broody hen that will hopefully hatch the clutch of eggs she is sitting on all without using any electricity! Now the waiting game is 20 to 21 days to hatch. We will keep you all posted.
Update:
We moved the hen and the eggs to the new enclosure so she wont be bothered by the other hens trying to lay eggs in the nest box that she is sitting.
We will keep an eye on her and make sure that she eats and drinks plenty of fresh water.
Update:
Update: It’s been a while since I last posted about our broody hen and hatching eggs… No luck with the eggs hatching so we collected a new clutch of eggs and put them into our incubator to see if we could hatch any of them. Waited patiently for 21 days to the hatch date, ensuring the temperature and humidity were steady. I Candled the eggs and they looked like they were good and developing nicely.
At 21 days we had 2 of the eggs hatch! the chicks looked healthy and after 24 hrs moved them to a brooder with electrolytes and Chick starter feed. All was well for 4 days then tragedy struck and they both just pass away … This was a disappointment to us as we hoped to be able to replace the chickens on our homestead without buying them from a hatchery.
Back to our broody hen she was still broody so we placed a few more eggs under her and candled them to check on their development, all looked good so far, After 21 – 22 days my wife came in and said that she had heard peeping sounds coming from the nesting box, so I went out and sure enough one of the eggs hatched! but the hen seemed a bit rough with the baby chick so I took the baby and put her in the brooder box making sure that the box was cleaned and disinfected before placing the baby in the box, well with 3 hrs this baby died. What could be causing the fatalities? We had hatched other eggs a few years back and hadn’t had these issues, I did find that some of the hens were only eating the scratch grains and net the Layer feed pellets, We cut back on the scratch grains to feed it 1 day of the week and changed their feed brand … We are waiting a month before we attempt to hatch more eggs. If we still are experiencing the same fatality results then I would think that it might be a genetic issue. Will keep you updated.