I was thinking about buying an incubator because I keep paying for new chickens as the older ones die.  But fortunately, I have a hen that sat on the eggs long enough to hatch five of them.

A few tips for anyone wanting to let a hen hatch eggs….

If you have more hens laying in the same nest, make sure you mark an X on the eggs you want to hatch out and remove the other eggs.  It takes 21 days for the eggs to hatch so I kept removing the eggs after there were eight eggs for her to hatch.   The eggs hatched out every other day.

Our hen would help peck the shell once the chick broke thru the shell.  The sixth chick pecked it’s way thru and then died. My husband and I had helped one other chick out of the shell by breaking part of the shell away to make it easier for it to get out.  Unfortunately, we didn’t help the sixth one because we were on our way to work.  Darn it.

We actually used a large plastic kid’s toy box without the top when it got closer to the 21 days.  We made a nice nest with hay and transferred the eggs while the mom had a fit.   We needed something large enough so the chicks could get out and walk around and have enough room for the food and water, too.  It was perfect.

We also made a rain cover which was a 4×4 board with four legs which were about 4 feet tall.   It kept the rain off the box and allowed the mom room to jump out and  get food and water with the other chickens.

We later transferred the chicks and mom into a 4×8 chain link cage with a heat lamp.  We live in the country and the danger of some animal preying on the baby chicks is very likely.

The chicks are a couple weeks old now and really growing fast.  I wanted to put the mom back in with the other chickens but my husband insist that we leave the mom with the chicks.   Sweet, huh?

Now I will put a perch in the cage so the chicks can start perching at night.

Just hope they aren’t all roosters…