chickens.. eggs.. what to do?

[Ginevive]

We have a small bantam hen, and I went out to clean the barn today and found 6 eggs! They are huge in comparison to her size (to me.) I also have 2 standard roosters (they all get along fine, oddly enough, but we are definately in the market for some more hens and should be getting them within the week.)
The mom is not on the eggs, and they are in a nest in a pile of baled straw (open bale, spread around.. had to open a different one for horse bedding as I did not want to disturb them!) What should I do? It is pretty cold (in the 40s tonight but the temps should plunge overnight.) Should I just write them off, attempt to open/eat them, or try to incubate them? I have a hovabator.. any advice?

[Entropy]

Waaaaaaaaaaay back when we had chickens if a hen laid, she was on the eggs 99% of the time. Most of the hens would lay and then forget about them at which time the eggs would have no chance, sounds like what your hen did there (they aren't real thinkers sadly).

Mom would send me out daily and any nest I found that had no hen on it and which the eggs were cold she'd have me bring them in and we tossed them in the fridge for food later.

[tweets_4611]

My mom had chickens for a while, and like Entropy said, if they were going to hatch them, she probably would have stayed on them. If she is up and wandering around, I'd say put them in the fridge. Fresh eggs ^_^ That's actually part of the reason my mom got her chickens, for the eggs....that and the babies when they hatch them are sooo cute!

[GirDance]

If she's not incubating them herself - breakfast time. They are pretty much done for any time they've spent a night without the mother constantly on them, and to try to incubate yourself you'd probably just end up with a really awful smell due to warm dead eggs after a few weeks.

[wolfy-hound]

Some times they do wait to lay a certain number before they start to set them. I'd eat them.
Some hens will set, even though they just laid the egg. Weirdo chickens, whatcha gonna do?

[cassandra]

I'd recommend scrambling them with a bit of fresh salsa, shredded sharp cheddar and topped with a bit of sour cream...

[Bojangles37]

Hens delay incubation of the first eggs so that the entire clutch hatches at the same time. She might have had another egg and that's why she wasn't on them yet. If she has been bred, there are likely marks on her back from the rooster(s) mounting her. If she doesn't have missing feathers, she probably hasn't been bred. If they're fertile eggs, some people swear they're a great aphrodisiac. You can basically do what you want with the eggs, just don't plan on keeping any more little boys if you incubate them. You might be able to get away with them surviving as it's some crazy thing that chicken eggs can do. They're basically in limbo and generally survive until incubated.

[Ginevive]

Thanks for the info everyone. I noticed that she had not been near them at all yesterday. I looked at them, and 4 out of 5 had cracks in the shell, and were frozen. I opened them up and the insides all came out in one piece, with pieces of frost clinging to it. One of them looked like a normal egg you'd buy from the store inside; yolk, white, not frozen; this one had not been cracked. But there was no blood in any of them; does this mean they were infertile? I don't personally like eating eggs as-is (I just never liked the taste) but I do eat them mixed into cakes, etc. My husband was leary about eating them for whatever reason; I told him that it's just the same as store-bought ones (probably better!) and we ate eggs from our friend's farm before.
I looked at our little hen today, and she seems fatter. I had seen one of the roosters mounting her, about a month ago.. noticed while I was cleaning the barn. If she produces more eggs, in this cold weather, can they still survive?

[Bojangles37]

If the eggs are freezing, I honestly don't know of their chances, but I would assume that it damages them beyond repair. In non-fertile eggs, the only reason for "blood" inside would be a blood spot, which generally happens when a small piece of the hen's reproductive tract sloughs off and ends up inside the egg. (Yep, gross, especially if anyone didn't know that before.) You will only start to notice the yolk becoming vascularized when the eggs are being incubated. The difference between a blood spot and egg vascularization is so different that you shouldn't have a problem distinguishing whether or not the egg is developing. There is really no way to tell if a day one egg is fertile to the best of my knowledge. Once it has begun incubation, you will actually notice full on veins going to a certain part of the yolk. These veins will get larger as the days progress and you will see them heading to what becomes a very obvious embryo by around day 3 (I believe). Once they have begun to develop, they're very fragile, and die quite easily.

Hope this helps, btw, I'm an Animal Science Major at UConn and I have a pretty large amount of experience with horses, I saw that you were asking someone about training advice. Feel free to contact me.

[Ginevive]

Hm.. I have an egg that I found in there tonight, from sometime during today. I wonder if it'd be worth incubating? It never got below 45 degrees out there.. the egg is not frozen. Or maybe I can just make Mark an omlette when he gets home I could grow to get used to this; free eggs..