How many days does a hen hatch chickens: the number of eggs for a brood hen, time, care

Cultivation of chickens is a profitable and useful business. Now many breed chickens to have dietary eggs on the table. In summer, hens provide their owners with fresh eggs. If desired, you can put the hen on the incubation material to have a brood.

The article tells about how many hours of the day a chicken hatches chickens, about the features of the incubation process.

When do chickens lay?

There is a biorhythmic cycle in chickens by nature, this determines the slowdown or complete cessation of egg laying in winter. In the spring, the hens start laying again. With the onset of cold weather, molting begins in birds, in connection with this, egg production in laying hens decreases, although it does not stop completely.Some breeds of chickens continue to lay well in the winter, if they are provided with warmth and lighting in the room.

It is known that chickens are meat, egg and meat-egg direction.

The start of laying eggs in chickens depends on their breed. Egg breeds start laying earlier than others.

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

How to choose a good mother hen?

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

Chicken with these characteristics can be tested in another way. Within 2-3 days, you should put it in a nest with lay eggs made of foam or other materials. A bird with a good brooding instinct will sit comfortably on dummies.

So it is suitable for laying hatching eggs. Experienced poultry farmers determine the 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 he althy and thoroughbred chicken (middle-aged) is planted in a nest, then closed with a lid for 3-4 days, releasing food and drink. In most cases, the bird begins to give signals of readiness for motherhood

How many eggs can a hen hatch at a time?

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

How to put a hen on eggs

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

Egg selection

There are requirements for selecting eggs for incubation:

• Eggs must be selected from a he althy laying hen with no signs of illness.
• Laying hens should show signs of puberty.
• Testicles for lining should be selected from under the chicken only fresh, after laying up to 6 days they remain fresh. Incubation material must be clean and free of cracks.
• Select backing material of the same average size.
• To accurately determine fertility, eggs can be checked with an ovoscope.

Important. The eggshell has a porous structure. Do not wash or wipe them before laying under the hen .

Preparing the site

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

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

How long does a laying hen incubate her eggs?

This question is asked by many novice poultry farmers.

The mother hen sits on the clutch around the clock for 21 - 23 days, if you provide her with good conditions: warmth and safety.

If the bird does not leave the nest without getting up, sits, then once 1-2 days you can remove it from there. Eggs at this time should not cool. So that the chicken embryo does not die, it is worth covering them with a rag.

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

Hatching process

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

The incubation process is not continuous, the mother hen leaves the nest in the yard to drink water, peck food, and sometimes she "baths" in the soil, spreading her wings.

Layer Care

After the hen sits on the eggs, the incubation time begins from that moment. At this time, you need to take care of the hen. A mother hen who sits on eggs usually does not leave the nest with eggs, she warms future chicks, turning over the incubation material, and takes care. She even forgets about food and drink.

However, many individuals leave the nest, go out to peck food, drink water. Therefore, a feeder with grain and a drinking bowl with clean water should be placed near the nest. There should also be a box with ash or soil for the "bathing" of 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 does not die, she must be carefully removed from the nest for eating. The bird will stay for about 10-15 minutes for all these procedures.

While the chicken is out, you can check the eggs for any defective ones. If there are, they are removed.

How to wean a chicken from incubating eggs

As mentioned above, hens have a natural biorhythm, according to which the instinct of motherhood awakens in poultry. It does not always match the needs of the person. Summer has passed, autumn is coming, and several layers are showing signs of incubation. If there are no appropriate conditions, for example, heat, the chicken will not be able to warm up the chickens, they will die.How to wean laying hens? Experienced poultry farmers have proven methods by which you can wean quok from incubation. The most common and proven method in practice can be considered bathing a hen in water. To do this, the body is dipped into a barrel of cold water, after which it stops clucking. With a sharp hypothermia, the chicken is under great stress.

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

Advice and advice from experienced poultry farmers

To prevent rats or other pests from interfering with brooding of chickens, it is necessary to put the nest in a safe place and constantly check it.

Some chickens secretly build nests in nettles or bushes that are not intended for incubation at all.There it is impossible to take care of the laying hen, she can remain in the rain. After the discovery of such an individual, experienced poultry farmers transfer the litter with eggs from under the hens to the chicken coop at night. The mother hen will show aggression. To prevent the crocodile from leaving the nest, it is necessary to cover it with a box (they do it a few days before the transfer). When the klusha 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 incubation.

For 2-3 weeks before the planned forced laying on eggs, the chicken should be fed with complete grain feeds, in which there is a sufficient amount of protein, proteins and vitamins. Additionally, you need to give chopped greens.

If you start breeding chickens, you can quickly see the profitability of this business.

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