What a nice little momma and chickies! As far as how long she stays in momma-mode, it depends on the hen... and her hormone levels. You could fix up an outdoor pen with a simple box house inside... sort of a chicken tractor. This would, by default, prolong her mothering days. I do this with my broodies and it works well. When they start getting cramped, I begin letting them free range with momma in the afternoons and then lure them back into the pen with crumbled hard boiled egg. Having the tractor located in the chicken yard helps the hen to keep her place in the flock and lets the other hens and the chicks get used to each other safely. Eventually, momma will remember that she is a hen with a LIFE, for goodness sakes! She may or may not start taking them into the big house at night. You kind of just have to play it by ear. She won't want to leave them until they are fully feathered and by then the weather will be warm enough that they won't need her at night. Usually by this time they learn to stay away from any mean hens you may have. So if she abandons them, they will still be okay in the chicken tractor until they get older. If they don't start using the big house on their own by fall, you may have to put them in a dog crate or the like for a couple of days INSIDE the chicken house. That way they will accept it as home. I've never had a brood of chicks that didn't do just fine. I've lost the odd hatchery chick, but my Sussex hens always raised every chick they hatched. They teach their babies well and equip them for real life. I much prefer natural incubation. Good luck with them and if something comes up that worries you, be sure to post about it. You might also visit Velvet Sparrow's site. I think you know how to get there, but I'll post the link anyhow. Here is a link that might be useful: Velvet Sparrow's Website - Bookmark it, folks!

Sorry you lost your chick. :( First time mamas can sometimes be clueless or just have some aspects of mothering missing, others take to it like a duck to water. You never know until you try. Are mama and eggs in a nice, soft, PRIVATE ground-level nesting area that offers NO barriers to the chicks moving around? I agree on the shavings thing, straw is too hard for new chicks to move around in and they can become entangled too easily. It's ridiculous how easily chicks can hurt or kill themselves. Make sure no other hens or roos can get in there and fight over the chicks and eggs. When are the rest of the eggs due to hatch? Chicken eggs take 21 days to incubate. How many eggs is she sitting on? Velvet ~:>

It is unlikely that the other hens will hurt the chicks, what is likely is that the other hens will push her off her nest and break the incubation, that's why people often make other arrangements for their bantams to go broody. As Fancifowl pointed out, people do get away with much worse, Chickens can take care of them selves fairly well most of the time.

Well I guess there aren't going to be any chicks. I decided to lift her off the eggs yesterday just to see if anything was happening and there weren't but two eggs left, the others had broken and there were no signs of any chicks. So I took the other two eggs and tried to listen carefully for any chirping, there wasn't any. So I decided to take them from her, she was out walking in the pen with her feathers still ruffled but she wasn't acting like she wanted to get back on the nest right away. One of the eggs cracked when I put it in the compost pile and I saw that it was a bad egg. I didn't feel so bad after that knowing it wasnt a good egg anyway. I'm wondering why they didn't hatch. Out of ten eggs you would think one or two would have hatched. Does that mean that all ten eggs weren't fertile? Oh well I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe I will have better luck next time. Is there a way I can tell if an egg is fertile or not beforehand? Thanks for the info. Anne