PoultryTalk.com

We have one of our partridge pekins sitting on 6 fertile Plymouth Rock eggs we bought from ebay. It's day 17 today and I wondered, now that the new house and run I built specifically for them is ready, if I can lift her and her eggs into the new house to hatch or will she get upset and abandon the eggs?

She's currently in a straw-lined shoebox which is inside a plastic cat carrier, which is inside a large dog cage in one of our sheds (!!), so I could just move the cat carrier and its contents into the new house, but will she mind?

i move mine all the time, once sitting on the eggs as long as she still with them she should be happy
sage does nw and then get confused and go back to where she first went broody after eating

Thanks, that's what we thought but we didn't want her going nuts and kicking them all over the place* because she didn't know where she was :o) These will be our first ever chicks so we're fussing over 'mummy' a bit, especially as hatching day gets closer.

*We've seen how broody hens behave - we've got three loony broody bantams at the moment. My wife said that our chocolate silkie looks like a huge hat! I think they must pick up vibes from the one sitting on eggs.

We've moved ours too and although we haven't had a good hatch rate, I don't think it's down to moving them. We get the new house ready (in our case, a rabbit hutch), then when she's gone out to feed, move the eggs and pop her in the new house. One of ours always returned to the 'wrong' spot, too - heading to the nest box in the main hen house - but once she's put in front of her eggs, she always got straight back on.

my girl got lost today and spend ten mins running in circals.
i had to go save her, but bel is so relaxed about it she sittng happy

Well, we moved her earlier... not bothered in the slightest!

tipical we worry more than we do

Heh! She looked a bit lost after her evening doings as she was always in sight of the shed she was in, but seemed fine when I pointed her toward the new 'nursery' :o)
There's pics on www.facebook.com/simon.sackett if you use it.

Just an update - two of the six eggs hatched, one on day 21 and the other on day 22. The first is perfect and doing well but the other was sickly and died on the night of day 24. We removed the remaining 4 eggs on day 24. One of them exploded with a loud crack after an experimental tap (smelled delightful!), and the others were just infertile eggs.

Oh well, 1 out of 6.

Now for the Welsummers... see new thread!