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Hatching Eggs at Home

Many chicken keepers keep their flocks refreshed by hatching eggs from their own hens. The easiest way to do this is to let nature take its course. All you have to do is provide a nest box for a broody hen. She will provide the right conditions for hatching eggs (although she will not be able to cope with more than a dozen at a time, or fewer with smaller breeds), warming and turning them as necessary. The only problem is that you can’t make a hen broody if she’s not feeling broody!


Collecting hen eggs in the morning
Collecting hen eggs in the morning is one of the great pleasures of chicken keeping

Broodiness is an instinct, and requires a hormone called prolactin to prompt the correct behavior. A hen fed with a healthy diet, including lots of calcium grit, plus the presence of a rooster, will usually become broody. You will then need to keep the other hens away from her nest box (a separate brooding coop is the ideal answer), to prevent them laying their own eggs in her box or otherwise disturbing her. Also, once the chicks are hatched, they are in danger of being attacked by the other birds.

Customer Images

Rainbow eggs
Biggest egg we've had from the girls!
Thanks for lunch girls!
Nothing beats a golden yolk from a fresh egg
Egg Contents
White Leghorn Eggs
White Leghorn Eggs
Omelet anyone?
Leghorn wind egg at the side of ex battery hens eggs
White leghorn and ex battery hens eggs
Eggs from Ex battery hen (top), cream legbar, salmon faverolles and black copper marans
Teeny bantam egg
Delicious fresh eggs
These eggs were laid by two chickens in two weeks
Finding a fresh egg every morning in the nest is wonderful
This weeks warren eggs
This weeks Miss Pepperpot eggs
my egg range ♡♡♡
eggs of all sizes
More eggs
Eggsplate
Eggs in a box
Coloured eggs
Eggs on skelter
Winter eggs
Still laying strong!
2 eggs held in hand

Comments

Jason, 5 March 2018

Thank you Omlet for the helpful information


Alfredo, 8 June 2014

No matter whichever came first it not afoul it's fowlbulous