Lessons from hatching chicks on the farm

When we bought our farm, I dreamed of having animals. I did months and months of research before I carefully selected the chickens we purchased and each step of the way, the process was exciting. But that excitement was nothing compared to watching this spring as one of our hens became a mama hatching chicks of her very own for the first time.

Batman – our Barred Rock hen named by our son at 3-years-old – would have never of been our first mom because I didn’t think she had the patience for hatching chicks. But she proved me wrong. She sat on those eggs through our unseasonably cool spring and even as temperatures dipped below freezing a few nights. Then she stayed put the next week as our temps skyrocketed into the 80’s. Her resilience was remarkable to watch.

These six little babies are the first little lives born here at Sugar Maple Farmhouse and because of that they’re always going to hold a special place in my heart.

Here’s a few tips if you’re thinking of letting your hens hatching chicks.

Don’t over mother the mama

The mother hen has an incredible innate need to understand what she needs. You don’t have to do much for her. Some people suggest putting a small dish of food next to her or a water dish. I tried with food for one day, but our other hens seemed to think that was a snack for them.

Instead, I trusted her to know what she needed and each day she would get up for a few minutes, get some food, get some water and then return to her box

That said, if you’re letting your hen attempt hatching chicks then make sure she returns to the right box. Every now and then one of the other hens would sneak into her box to lay while she was out eating and she’s pick a different box with different eggs to return to.

In that case, we would intervene. We would remove the box stealer and then remove Batman from whatever box she was in and put her back.

Mark the eggs

So due to the chickens all wanting to lay in the same box, we would occasionally get an extra egg or two in the box where Batman was brooding. About a week into the process, I marked all the eggs in the box with a food safe pen to keep track of them. This included eggs she had been sitting on that belonged to other hens. As long as they had been in the box at the end of that first week, they got marked.

It was easy to do this when she would get up for food and water, so I didn’t have to disturb her. She would always get up around the same time each evening and I was able to check the box to see if there were any new arrivals that needed to be moved to a different box.

Also, she did end up hatching at least one from our hen Primrose who is a Lavender Orpington, like the daddy Basil. So one chick that Batman has been mothering is a full Lavender Orpington, which is honestly kind of amazing to see that they just adopt babies that look different as their own.

Candle if you want to, or don’t worry about it

We never candled the eggs she was on. We have (had) one rooster and she hung out with him pretty frequently. I was confident at least some of the eggs would be fertilized. Once I marked them, I just left them alone for the most part. I also didn’t have a flashlight to check them with so that might have been part of it.

However, three weeks into the process I started getting nervous. We still had no chicks! I talked Kevin into going out there on night 22 to attempt to candle them with my phone. As we were trying to move Batman off her nest, we heard our first little chirps.

We lifted her off and there was one beautiful baby chick in the box with her! It was incredible to see that little gift of life in the box. I started to tear up and I couldn’t wait to show the kids.

We could see one other egg had a chip in it so we put her back down. As we did, her foot caught on it and “helped” it to hatch more.

This brings me to my next lesson…

Don’t pick up your hen during the pipping stage

Pipping is when the chick inside the egg first starts to break through the shell. Internal pipping is when you might notice a crack in the eggshell if you’re incubating. It might look circular in nature and it’s the first time they get their beak into the air cell. It’s basically when they peck the shell from the inside.

Extremal pipping is when you can see that they have finally broken through the shell a bit.

Then there is also a process called “zipping” where the chicken will make a circular opening in the eggshell to fully enter the world. It sort of unzips the egg from the inside.

If you lift up your hen during this time, like we did, then you risk hurting the hatching process. It’s clearly something we won’t be doing again.

Chicks eat the yolk, so don’t worry

Chicks are not the yolk. The yolk is actually food that the growing chicks eat while developing. The yolk will fully sustain the chick while inside the eggshell. With the nourishment from the egg, the chick can survive up to three days after hatching without food or water.

FYI – The clear liquid in the egg, or the egg white is like amniotic fluid. It’s really there as a cushioning for the egg itself.

Be aware of splay leg and how to fix it

We had one baby that was either born with Splay Leg or injured herself very shortly after hatching trying to go down the ramp to the run. Whatever the case, her leg wasn’t really working correctly and she hobbled. She couldn’t walk well or stand very well to eat or drink.

Splay leg is a comment congenital and developmental abnormality. It can be caused by things like fluctuating humidity or a temperature being to high or too low in an incubator. It can also be fixed.

To fix splay leg, we made a brace from a band-aid. To do so, simply cut the band-aid in half, and use one half of it to make a brace. You wrap one side of the band-aid around one of the chick’s legs at the knee and then wrap the other side of it around the other leg.

Using the band-aid as a brace will help stabilize the legs and help to pull them together back under the chick.

Our baby chick, whom I call Pip (short for Pipsqueak since I feel like she was the underdog), did so incredibly well once we put the brace on. She was a little slower than the rest for a few days but she could walk and could stand immediately. It was really amazing to see and to know that we helped her. Today, you’d never know there was anything wrong with her.

Give them a little space if you can

Do you need to move a mama and her babies away from the rest of your chickens? The short answer is no. The mama will protect them. Our chicks are 5 weeks old now and she will still run off the other hens sometimes. She was very protective right from the start and honestly, my chickens were all shockingly accepting of the babies too.

However, it was stressful for me watching them all together. Every now and then one of the chickens would step on a chick, just simply because they weren’t paying attention and I could feel my anxiety skyrocket.

Also, we have cats and the wire on our run is large enough for chicks to fit through. The cats would sit there looking at the chicks like they were quick and tasty little tidbits. They were just waiting for one of them to mess up.

Luckily, our coop is divided into two areas. I have a side where I keep their food and supplies that also still has nest boxes. You can see the coop {HERE}. I put Batman and the babies on that side for a few days.

That way the other chickens could see them, but the chicks couldn’t go out in the run or fall down the ramp or get eaten by a cat. After about four days, and once Kevin added some chicken wire to the bottom of the run – which the chicks can’t fit through – I let them back on the side with the rest of the flock.

Did I need to do that? No. Did it give me piece of mind? Yes.

Have chick appropriate food and water vessels

While you don’t need to give them their own space, you do need to make sure that the chicks have access to adequate food and water in a place they can reach.

Our chicken waterers sit on cement blocks so the adult chickens don’t have to bend down too far. A lot of people who use these have them hanging from a beam in the coop. The chicks clearly can’t reach this water source (and even at 5 weeks they still can’t reach it) so we had to put out something more appropriate for them. We have a chick waterer similar to this one and use a mason jar with it.

Our feeders are made out of PVC piping and sit up off the ground. Now the chicks can access those but in the beginning they couldn’t. We had to set aside a dish of food for them. In the first days, we would put food right into the corners of the nest box so the other chickens wouldn’t eat it. We have a chick feeder similar to this one, but we don’t use the bottle anymore or really the plastic top part with the holes.

You can see our DIY PVC feeders {HERE}.

Plan for the boys

This goes without saying, but you will get a mix of boys and girls. Figure out what you’re going to do with the roosters if you don’t intent to keep them.

Apparently, when you mix a Barred Rock with a Lavender Orpington the boys will have a white spot on their heads. I thought this might be an old wives tale kind-of-thing, but in our case, this has proven true. He is for sure a rooster and started developing his comb at 2-3 weeks old.

I’m honestly not sure what we are going to do with him yet. We named him Spot and right now he is fine, but we already have his daddy to deal with. Basil can be very aggressive about protecting his girls and I don’t want to worry about two roosters.

Plan for them all

While considering the roosters, also consider how your flock will increase as you let your hens start hatching chicks. With these six babies our flock has increased to 17. But, we already have another hen sitting on eggs. Our coop is supposed to be for 21 chickens. Having such a large run extends how many chickens we can have, but I still don’t really want to go over 25.

We already get plenty of eggs and we gift a lot to the neighbors. I’m not planning on starting a free-range chicken farm so we can’t go on like this forever. I already had a discussion with my daughter about giving some away, but I’ve never actually given any kind of a pet away so the idea makes me kind of sad. I’m hoping we can find them all good homes that will appreciate them and the eggs they produce.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch

There’s a reason this is a saying. Batman was sitting on about eight eggs. We thought we were done at five. Three days after our fifth baby chick was born, a 6^th baby hatched. I couldn’t believe it. It seems crazy to think that the eggs could have been laid so many days a part, but it happened.

Batman seemed to be over babies by the time No. 6 hatched though. She wasn’t paying her a lot of attention and obviously all the other chickens were bigger, stronger and faster. By. The time she was born they were venturing out of the coop and into the run on a daily basis.

I kept an eye on Chick 6 and how Batman was treating her the first few days. But in no time at all, she was keeping up with everyone else and Batman seemed to adjust too.

Eggs 7 and 8 never did hatch. I kept them in another box separate from the rest of the coop to be sure. I have a friend, Annette, over at Azure Farm who thought all her eggs had hatched. They wrapped them in a box and were going to throw them away only to find a chick and a duck inside the box a few days later!

So, reminder, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

For more about raising chickens, click {HERE}.