I had a hen nesting. A week ago another hen decided to use the same nest. So there they sat double decker until, lo and behold, a chick. Both hens claimed the sole chick and are working teamwork raising it. This system is working good for them. One chases any critter that gets to close while the other one stays with the chick. All I can figure is this chick must be he Golden Rooster or the the Queen Hen.

-- lynda (lyndadan@cyberhighway.net), July 29, 2000

Answers

You're lucky. I had two hens sharing the same nest and they kept fighting over the eggs. Half the eggs got cold and didn't develop. Some of the others cracked so I finally seperated the hens.

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), July 29, 2000.

We had something like this happen with mallard ducks when I was a kid, but the ducks were babies together, probably sisters, that my brother raised. They were our first ducks and when we got a couple of males, the girls just sat on one huge nest together, didn't know who laid which egg, hatched them and cared for them together. They were vigorous in defending their babies, but they were also fairly tame, so we didn't have too much of a problem when it was banding time, etc. It was amazing to see the size of their broods though -- I think the record was about 28 at one time. They nested together their entire laying career, unless my brother would separate them.

-- J E FROELICH (dragnfly@chorus.net), July 29, 2000.

Lynda, it sounds like your hens are working it out. If you ever have a problem more like Dee's, just be careful. Sometimes birds will spend a lot of time fighting over one or more babies, then both prospective parents will just give up. That leaves the baby or babies up a creek. I have a terrible problem with my geese doing that, and occasionally have had chickens fight over a baby, then abandon the baby. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), August 03, 2000.

I have a question kind of along these lines. Even tho I have read lots and lots of info about raising chickens, chicks, etc... I have yet to figure this one thing out. When hens are "setting" - How do you configure the setup to accomodate more than one hen at a time. Let me explain. We have 2 chicken coops. When we notice a hen "setting" we move her from the large one to the small one and put her and the eggs into a nesting box. She has a small fenced off area to go outside and come back in as she pleases that is seperated by the chicken wire, from the rest of the flock. This works great as long as we have only one at a time. Right now we have 4 "setting". We moved them all in the little coop, with thier own nesting boxes. What a mess, they fuss with each other, get on & off their nests, one left completely (flew over fence, need to cut wings again) and in general cause havoc!! I can not hardly believe in days past, people had a yard area with housing completely seperated for each individual hen!?!? I know I must be missing something, I really want our hens to hatch and raise their own chicks, but how do I accomplish this in a reasonable fashion? Any thoughts would helpful!! Thanks! Wendy

-- Wendy@GraceAcres (wjl7@hotmail.com), August 03, 2000.