MARY STADNYK's advice re HATCHING CHICKS

MOM told me how to HATCH CHICKENS with a BROODING HEN even in a CLASSROOM!

Time of the year when you can set a clucker: between March and July.

Step 1:  Select a brooding hen or “clucker”.  When a hen is making clucking noises and has been on a nest in the henhouse for 3 days and nights without getting off, you know she is ready.

            Not all breeds of chicken produce motherly hens.  Some of the suitable breeds of chicken are Rhode Island Reds, White Rocks, Grey Rocks, Jersey Black Giants, Cornish, Sussex, and White Wyandots.

Step 2:  Prepare a nest – just a cardboard box with hay or straw.

Step 3: De-louse the clucker before taking her into the house.  Do this in the henhouse.  One     powdering should be enough. 

One type of powder is called LM4 Dust and is put out by the Niagara Brand Spray Co.  It is 4% Malathion.  There are many different brands.   

Step 4: Settling the clucker: Put 3 eggs in the nest.  For a few days at the beginning, cover the nest with a grate so that the clucker cannot leave the nest.  After she starts going back to the nest, you don’t need the grate anymore.    

Establish a routine time of the day, such as 8:30 am to take the clucker off the nest.  The hen comes off the nest for food, water, and toilet only once a day for 15 minutes and never at night.   

Take the hen outside.  Spread newspapers if you don’t want muck in that area and give her gravel, wheat or barley, and water.  Tie a string to her leg so that you can bring her in easily.  After a while, she’ll come quite readily.   

How much to feed her: Put out a can of wheat or barley.  When she finishes, refill the can.  She will drink water out of a pail.

The settling-in period will take 3 days. 

Step 5: Discard the  3 eggs and give the clucker 19 to 21 fresh eggs which have come from a yard in which a rooster is with the hens.

Step 6: Check the eggs for fertility after 7 days.  Sine a strong light like a flashlight on them in a darkened room.  Check for a red spot with blood vessels radiating away from it.  This is a fertile egg.  Infertile eggs look clear as does a fresh egg.  An egg that was fertile but has not developed will show a small red line adhering to the inside of the shell or a red or brown circle.

            Discard the eggs that aren’t fertile.

Step 7: After 20 days, the chicks will start to crack the eggs.  On the 21^st day, all the chicks should be out.

Discard all the eggs that have not hatched on the 21^st day.  The chicks that might hatch from any eggs after 21 days would not be healthy.

Step 8:  Once the chicks are hatched, you can’t keep them and the hen in the classroom because she is very messy and strong-smelling.

            The newly-hatched chicks do not require food or water for 60 hours.  (This is why hatcheries can send chicks out to farms where they will be kept warm with heat lamps.) 

            Feed the chicks chick starter, oatmeal, millet, rolled wheat or cracked wheat.  From the start, the chicks also get gravel. 

Use inverted glass jars for the chicks’ water.  In their water, for a few days, you can put ‘chick zone’.  This is a liquid chemical so they won’t get diarrhea, but it is not essential.   

            In a week’s time, the chicks can eat whole grain with the hen – not without her.

            The hen stays with the chicks only about 6 weeks.