Hubby runs a small chicken egg business which allows us to qualify as a "bona fide farm". When things are running well, we produce between 5-7 dozen eggs per day and sell all of them to people in the area, with lots of weekly, scheduled customers. To do so, he buys "PoL" (Point of Lay) Industrial Chickens raised by other small scale farmers.
We try hard to treat these Chickens as our "employees", so a policy we began early on, is that even if Industrial Chickens aren't supposed to go broody, if one does so, this need is accommodated. Last year we had two birds who did so in the usual way, but the infrastructure I used for that was already getting old, and is now simply no longer a safe option.
This year, was tricky. A bird "sort of" went broody - she was not quite consistently in the nest box, but when she came out in response to activity in the shelter, she came out all fluffy and making the "cluck, cluck" Mother Hen noise. Sigh... I didn't need this. I had never experienced this sort of "confused" mothering behaviour before.
I hatched a plan... (bad pun, sorry)
STEP 1: I decided to dog crate her right in her shelter and gave her 5 fake duck eggs. After about 5 days, she seemed to settle, but only reliably covered 4 of the eggs.
This was not going to work farm wise - my infrastructure is spread very thin due to a bunch of factors. I don't have space to house a mom with 3-4 chicks.
STEP 2: Move her crate to the brooder and give her 4 real eggs. Put 22 more eggs in my friend's incubator that lives in our hall bathroom.
STEP 3: Hurry up and wait. Occasionally check the incubator eggs for viability. Not perfect, but good enough. It's down to 16 eggs with a few of them "maybe's".
STEP 4: Fire up the brooder 3 days before hatch. First the under floor heat. Then due to the crappy weather we've been having , the wall heat also.
STEP 5: Chicks start hatching. A little white head is seen poking out in front of Mrs. Coop, right on schedule with the incubator. The Incubator hatches for about 18 hours. Thirteen live - the last 3 aren't viable.
STEP 6: 10 PM (it gets dark very late where I live at this time of year and we wanted "dark") Warm my hot rice pack and put it in the bottom of a bucket with several rags over top. Gently lift all the chicks from the incubator - some still damp from hatching - into the bucket. Carry it up the hill to the brooder. Hubby did the honours of lifting each chick out of the bucket and into the dog crate with Mrs Coop. As soon as Mrs Coop heard the peeping, she started the "cluck, cluck, cluck" Mother Chicken call. She sucked them all in like a pro!
STEP 7: Close the dog crate door, with just a hanging waterer - this would keep any chicks from wandering the first night by accident.
STEP 8: Go up early the next morning, remove the dog crate door entirely, and leave Mom to do Mom things!
For those of you doing the math, Mrs Coop has 16 chicks to raise. She hatched 3 of her 4 eggs. This is enough to be worth the time I will have to put into keeping her fed, watered, and the coop cleaned. This is enough, that if there are even a reasonable number of females, I'll be able to make a genuine flock out of the birds. They may not lay quite as well as Industrial Chickens, as they are crosses, and they aren't sex-linked, so we'll have some young roosters that are good eating even if they aren't very large. To add to this, part way through, a hen from last year's hatch went broody, the normal way, so she's now sitting well on 10 eggs that will only be 2 weeks behind.
I'm *really* happy to have "mom raised" birds. The issue is, that we have several portable shelters for the egg farm business that are only efficient if they have 15 to 20 actively laying birds in them. With the two moms kept with the younger birds, and the two groups eventually combined, I should have acceptable numbers. The Farm needs and the Chicken needs have a chance!
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