There are two ways how to increase the chicken population in your yard. The first is getting Chicks in a homemade incubator, and the second – hatching a chicken egg-laying until the emergence of the young.
The most natural and effective is the breeding hen chickens. In this article we will talk about how to put a hen to hatch eggs, that is necessary for optimal hatching rate, how many days to chickens hatched from eggs.
When the hen is laying ready
In order to understand that the chicken is ready to become a hen, it should, depending on the breed, to determine the timing of puberty:
- Breeds of beef ready to be hens or hens only 7 or 8 months after his birth.
- Meat-egg and breed of chicken ready to lay eggs approximately 20 – 24 weeks.
- From egg chicken breeds puberty comes about at day 140.
The easiest way to determine the ready or not chicken become a hen by her comb. When it is of soft pink the small will become big and red, you can try to bring a hen to the nest. Based on the natural biorhythmic cycle is slowed down or completely stopped egg-laying in the winter and in the spring, it started again. That is why experienced breeders are trying to avoid in the winter the appearance of klocek and nests.
There is some dependence of the beginning of the oviposition period, hatching was. Start laying eggs earlier than other those broods, which were in winter and early spring, but later than other late – spring and summer brood.
As the egg begins and is adjourned
In the period of embryonic development in the body of a chicken laid a certain number of ova, which in the future will visaginase eggs. Basically this number is from 600 to 3600 piecesthat in my entire life have to carry the hen.
The formation of the eggs occurs according to the following scheme:
- Start growing the egg.
- When it increases in size, separates and falls into the oviduct.
- If life chicken at this stage will be the cock, the egg will be fertilized. It is for this reason the embryo is the yolk in the shell progresses through the oviduct. In the period of promotion of the fetus to mother hen ways he first acquires the protein shell, and after shell. It is the egg placed under a hen so she hatched a chicken. If in this period in the life of the chickens had a rooster, the egg will be without Bud.
- The hen lays an egg, which accounts for eating or for incubation.
Full masonry cycle and the time delay is governed by the qualities of nature. It is known that the appearance of the protein takes about 20 hours and the hours remaining is the development of yolk and the formation of the shell. 40 minutes after deposition of the egg starts the development of the other eggs.
Oviposition
Chicken, compared to other bird species, the longest period of oviposition. If you feed the hen and ensure her proper care, it can carry on for 365 days.
After that, she will need to rest for 30 days. And then the cycle begins anew.
In the first year of life of laying hens at her maximum egg production. Every year the number of laid eggs is reduced. The minimum number of layer gives 10 year of his life. Chicken can be hen in the first year of life, but maternal instincts she shows up to 2 or 4 years of life.
What you need to know when choosing hen
How to make a hen sit on eggs and make it a hen? In order to select such individuals do not make mistakes, is to carefully herd the bird to observe.
This hen has such qualities:
- The increase in temperature of the body.
- Plucking on her belly feathers.
- Quotage.
- The lack of oviposition.
Of all livestock will help you to choose the best hen such external signs:
- Not very much weight, but dense physique.
- Great bright thick plumage.
- Large wings and a crest.
- A big belly.
- Later the other goes to bed before everyone gets up.
When out of the crowd will choose the correct individual, then be sure to check how it is plodding. For such tests it is necessary to equip a convenient nest and put in it 3 porcelain egg, and then seat to the selected individual. If for two days now and can’t get out of egg dummies and their leaves, then you can safely replace them with the real thing, which was fertilized by the rooster.
Such a hen will be able to cover and warm your body the maximum number of eggs. In the future this will be now a responsible and caring mother, which the chickens will feel safe.
Preparation of eggs for incubation
In order for the hen to offer the egg from laying to hatching, take it no later than 7 days after oviposition.
At egg collection they are stored at temperatures not above 15 degrees and humidity of 75%. Those eggs that have been selected, there should be no stains and cracks.
This is the selection of healthy brood.
The number of eggs in a clutch should be chosen depending on the size of the hen. Their number varies from 10 to 15 pieces per hen.
The most important condition is that the hen around the nest, gave the most heat and covered all his body. To hatch hen may not only their brood but also the offspring of other birds, including goose and duck.
How to prepare the nest
When you have a hen and you have found it the required number of eggs, immediately start preparing for her cozy nest in which she will be able to hatch Chicks. For hatching chickens the ideal period is spring, but you can start with February or in the autumn.
Great for creating a nest suitable box of wood, the size of which is 35 to 55 centimeters. It must be well paved with dry straw bedding. The nest with the hen should be placed in a warm, quiet and dark place. It is not necessary to position the nest high off the floor. But the rodents to get near her should not. All the selected eggs should be immediately placed in the nest. This is due to the fact that after some period of time a hen would get up and leave the nest with the Chicks that manage to be born.
How the chicken incubates eggs before the chicken
How the hen sits on the eggs? This question interests many aspiring poultry farmers.
A hen sit on a clutch will be around the clock. But this process will not last more than 21 – 23 days in complete comfort. This important process throughout the period is a cause for acute anxiety and nervousness, if we make noise near her, to touch or in any other way violate her privacy and quiet.
For this reason, the first two days it is better not to come to her. But next to the clutch is necessary to put a bowl of high-calorie high-quality grain and food and a drinking bowl. After the specified period you need to act based on the circumstances.
If the hen nest continues to sit, not get up, no matter how much time passed from the beginning of the time of hatching, you should at least once a day for 20 minutes to remove it from there. This is necessary in order to facilitate the bowels, ate and warmed up. The eggs have cooled in the natural homemade incubator, at this time is to cover them with straw, cloth or blanket. Before to do this, you should clean the nest from discarded, damaged or crushed hen eggs.
If there is a need, then you need the litter to change. If the hen is rolling out of the nest for some eggs, it means that the germ that is in it already froze. This egg should be discarded from the nest. After all of the procedures performed, put the hen back on the clutch. Now you know how the hen incubates the eggs, what and when your help for it to be necessary.
Do you need human assistance in the birth of a chicken
How many days to hatch chicken eggs at home? This question puzzled many.
Chickens usually start to see the light since 20 days and before the end 21. This procedure can be delayed slightly. But more than 22 days to wait for the birth of the Chicks you should not.
Newly born chick with the hen must be before the moment of complete desiccation, and then it is taken and put into another box, which is prepared specially for such cases. The process is repeated until the hatching of the last nestling. The reason is that after the first bird, a hen can leave the nest.
In the box of Chicks is better kept in the coop or incubator with temperature control in the range of 36-38 degrees. Kids should be given boiled finely chopped eggs. After 24 hours in the evening to give kids the hen and more in her life not to interfere. All further efforts on the brooding and rearing Chicks mother hen takes over.
How to break a hen from hatching
Of the chickens there is a certain schedule, which, unfortunately, rarely coincides with the graph of man and his needs. It concerns and hatching clutches. It would seem that the summer is over and it is the autumn season, and a few hens in your household clucked. Is it possible to wean them from it and stop the process? The answer is simple: you can. There are a few simple secrets as a short period to wean from the incubation of the bird. Basically the period is extended until the spring time. And in the spring, you can still use the maternal quality of your birds.
The most common and proven method is to bathe the birds in the cool water. Can her body dipping into a basin or barrel with cool water. But the head laying hens should remain dry. Many wonder why this method works. There are several versions for this reason: it is supercooled and the temperature of its body decreases or chicken simply is under stress.
Some individuals helps being in a cardboard empty nest without eggs and litter for several days. Some individuals cease to quotate after a few days you will live in a separate enclosure.
Which of these methods you select, depends on you. Because birds are all different and each of them in its own maternal instinct.
