How many days or days does a hen need to hatch chicks, recommendations for egg selection

Breeding chickens is a profitable and useful business. Nowadays, many people raise chickens to have dietary eggs for the table. In summer, chickens provide their owners with fresh eggs. If desired, you can place the hen on incubation material to have a brood.

The article talks about how much time of day a hen hatches her chicks, and about the features of the incubation process.

When do chickens lay eggs?

Chickens have a naturally biorhythmic cycle, which determines the slowdown or complete cessation of egg laying in winter. In spring, chickens begin to lay eggs again. With the onset of cold weather, birds begin to molt, and therefore egg production in laying hens decreases, although it does not stop completely. Some breeds of chickens continue to lay eggs well in winter if they are provided with warmth and light indoors.

It is known that chickens come in meat, egg and meat-egg varieties.

The beginning of egg laying in chickens depends on their breed. Egg breeds begin to lay eggs earlier than others.

The onset of oviposition depends on the time of hatching. Those birds that hatched in the winter and spring periods begin laying earlier than others, and the summer brood begins later than others. Chickens of egg breeds begin to lay eggs after 17-19 weeks. Meat breeds after 22 - 23 weeks. Meat breeds – after 28 weeks.

How to choose a good hen?

As a hen, you need to choose a healthy, normally developed chicken that has shown good egg production during the season. Only then can you get good chickens. First you need to observe the behavior of a flock of poultry. A hen with an awakened maternal instinct stops laying eggs, rarely leaves the nest into the yard, and resists when trying to drive it away. Feathers and down can be found in the nest; she constantly cackles with characteristic sounds. In addition to these signs, you can check your body temperature; it may be slightly elevated.

A chicken with such signs can be checked in another way. Within 2-3 days, you should put her in a nest with fake eggs made of polystyrene foam or other materials.A bird with a good brooding instinct will sit quietly on dummies.

This means that it is suitable for laying hatching eggs. Experienced poultry farmers can also identify a hen by her comb, which turns from pale pink to bright red and increases in size.

Important! If there is no suitable individual among the chickens, and the number of birds needs to be increased, then the instinct of motherhood can be forcibly awakened. To do this, a healthy and purebred chicken (middle-aged) is placed in a nest, then covered with a lid for 3-4 days, letting it out to eat and drink. In most cases, the bird begins to give signals of readiness for motherhood.

How many eggs can a chicken hatch at one time?

The number of eggs to be placed under the hen depends on the size of the chicken, which is determined by the breed of the bird. The eggs should be placed in a single layer under the hen, and she should cover them with her body while sitting in the nest. One large chicken will fit 13-15 eggs.

How to put a hen on eggs

Before planting a quonka on eggs, you need to select good lining material and prepare a place for the nest in a warm and safe room.

Egg selection

The selection of eggs for incubation has its own requirements:

• Eggs must be taken from a healthy laying hen without signs of disease.
• The hen should show signs of puberty.
• Eggs for lining should be selected from under the chicken - only fresh ones; after laying, they remain fresh for up to 6 days. The incubation material must be clean and free of cracks.
• Choose lining material of the same average size.
• To accurately determine fertilization, eggs can be checked using an ovoscope.

Important. Egg shells have a porous structure.You cannot wash or wipe them before laying them under the laying hen..

Preparing the site

After you have found a hen and the required number of eggs, you need to prepare a nest for hatching chicks.

The nest can be of different shapes, it should be cozy, preferably wooden. You can make it from willow twigs, weave it from a rope with dimensions of 60 by 50 cm, with a depth of about 30 cm. The bottom of the box should be covered with a bedding of dry straw, leaving a recess in the middle for the eggs so that they do not roll out to the sides. The box with the hen is placed in a dark, quiet place, not high from the floor.

How long does a laying hen hatch eggs?

This question is asked by many novice poultry farmers.

The hen sits on the clutch around the clock for 21–23 days, if she is provided with good conditions: warmth and safety.

If the bird does not leave the nest and sits without getting up, then you can remove it from there once every 1-2 days. The eggs should not cool down at this time. To prevent the chicken embryo from dying, you should cover them with a rag.

If necessary, the litter should be changed. Sometimes you can see that a chicken rolls an egg out of the nest, which means that the embryo of the egg has frozen. Such defective eggs must be removed from the chicken.

Hatching process

The process of hatching chickens by a hen has its own characteristics. The chicken warms the eggs with the heat of her body, which is within +37.8 degrees. The hen has a natural instinct to turn them over on her own so that all the eggs are heated evenly. She also wets the testicles with saliva.

The incubation process is not continuous; the hen leaves the nest to go into the yard to drink water, peck food, and sometimes she “bathes” in the soil, spreading her wings.

Laying hen care

After the hen sits on the eggs, brooding time begins from that moment. The hen needs to be looked after at this time. A hen that sits on eggs usually does not leave the nest with eggs; she warms the future chicks, turning over the incubation material, and shows care. She even forgets about food and drink.

However, many individuals leave the nest and go out to peck food and drink water. Therefore, near the nest you should place a feeder with grain and a drinker with clean water. There should also be a box with ash or soil for “bathing” the bird, as well as gravel or shells. If she does not leave the nest for a long time, so that the hen does not become exhausted and die, she must be carefully removed from the nest to eat. The bird will stay for about 10-15 minutes for all these procedures.

While the chicken is away, you can check the eggs to see if they are defective. If there are, they are removed.

How to wean a chicken from incubating eggs

As mentioned above, chickens have a natural biorhythm, according to which the instinct of motherhood awakens in poultry. It does not always coincide with human needs. Summer has passed, autumn is approaching, and several hens are showing signs of brooding. If there are no appropriate conditions, for example, heat, the chicken will not be able to warm up the chicks, they will die. How to wean laying hens? Experienced poultry farmers have proven ways to wean quons from incubation. The most common and practice-tested method is bathing the hen in water. To do this, the body is dipped into a barrel of cold water, after which it stops cackling. With sudden hypothermia, the chicken experiences enormous stress.

Some owners place such a hen in an empty box without bedding and eggs for several days. A positive result is obtained, the chicken is weaned from incubation. This method is also used in villages: a few drops of vodka are poured into the bird’s beak.

Tips and tricks from experienced poultry farmers

To prevent rats or other pests from interfering with the hatching of chicks, you need to place the nest in a safe place and constantly check it.

Some hens secretly build nests, hiding in nettles or bushes that are not at all intended for incubation. It is impossible to care for the laying hen there; she may be left in the rain. After detecting such an individual, experienced poultry farmers transfer the litter with eggs from under the chickens to the chicken coop at night. The hen will show aggression. To prevent the quonka from leaving the nest, you need to cover it with a box (this is done a few days before the transfer). When the black chickweed gets used to this phenomenon, you can move it to a new place.

Beginning poultry farmers should know that the hen must be intensively prepared for brooding.

2-3 two to three weeks before the planned forced laying of eggs, the chicken should be fed with complete grain feed, which contains a sufficient amount of protein, proteins and vitamins. Additionally, you need to give chopped greens.

If you start raising chickens, you can quickly see how profitable this business is.