If she only started sitting the eggs in the last couple of days, I'd toss out everything--eggs too--and let her start again with fresh nesting material & new eggs.

If the eggs are fairly well along, you can try and save them. First, create a temporary nest in a small cardboard box or a large mixing bowl with a bit of straw or an old towel. Have a damp (not wet) paper towel or two ready to clean the eggs with, plus fresh nesting material. Have all this stuff ready to go before you approach the nest, so that mama hen won't be disturbed for too long.

Remove mama hen from the nest and shoo her away for a minute. If she has dried egg on her feathers, leave her be--she can clean herself, and you don't want to wet her feathers down and have her soak & chill the eggs when she returns to the nest. It won't harm the eggs to have her off the nest for a short time (hens naturally take anywhere from 10-20 minute breaks from setting, eggs are designed to handle this). Take one good egg at a time and GENTLY dab at it with a damp paper towel to clean off the worst of the mess. DON'T wash the egg, as eggs are porous and doing so can help introduce bacteria to the interior of the egg and kill the forming chick, or chill the egg too much. Check the eggs quickly but carefully for cracks, and be careful not to jostle them too much, turning them slowly in your hand. You only want to remove the worst of the crud. If the eggs are only a bit messy, leave them be. Mother Nature knows what she is doing, and over the course of setting on them, the body oils from mama hen's skin will polish the eggs to a lovely glow and polish off minor amounts of crud. :)

Transfer the eggs one at a time into the temporary nest. Remove the fouled (fowled? hurr...) nesting material and place fresh, make a small well in it and place mama hen at the entrance to the nest & eggs so she sees it. Then back off. Let HER return to her nest herself, as if you place her right on the eggs she might end up stumbling around, stepping on them and you end up with more broken eggs.

Let her be, and hopefully all will be well. :) Good luck with the hatch! I have a chicken site with lots of info that might help, the section on hens & chicks is here:

http://jackshenhouse.com/VSChickHensBroodiesChicks.htm

Velvet ~:>

Hi Velvet,

they are a week. Thank you for the info/checked out your site lots of helpful information.

When you said try and save them? Did you mean that beause of the broken egg on nesting material and eggs that there may be bacteria that will absorb through the egg shell (because it is pores)and cause harm to unborn chicks?

Thanks again,

Nelda

Yes. Eggshells are porous and can transmit bacteria to the inside. Unless the eggs are heavily soiled, I'd leave them be. :)

Velvet ~:>

velvet,

I went ahead and followed your advice closely on cleaning the eggs and removing soiled nesting materials.

It was a good thing that I did I found another egg that had a hole in it. I opened up the top of the egg (after smelling it first!) did not want to open up a stink bomb! When I poured it out -it was a fertile egg - the chicken was already developing and you could actually see the eyes and formation of beak and body formation!

I know that they only sit for 21 days - but just 6 days into the sitting and you can see all that?

It was really awesome - but sad that it did not make it.

thank you for your advice.

Nelda

Oh yes, chicks do form that fast. :) If you want to see a chart of the entire cycle, click here:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/birds/info/chicken/egg.shtml

Enchanted Learning is an educational site for kids, but this page on egg development is fantastic.

Velvet ~:>