Broodiness is a natural chicken instinct that happens to some chickens every year, and others not at all. Certain breeds of hens are more broody than others. Cochins have a strong tendency to turn broody every year during their prime egg-laying years, as do Buff Orpingtons, Buff Rocks, Brahmas, and Silkies. This is all fine and dandy if your chicken does have eggs to hatch, but sometimes, a chicken will sit on unfertilized eggs or even imaginary eggs.
Warm weather and a hormonal imbalance, caused by no doing of the flock owner, will spur a hen to turn broody for weeks on end, waiting for non-existent chicks to hatch.
Left unattended, a hen will stay broody for around 21 days, which is the time it takes to hatch a clutch of fertile eggs. If they come near her, she might peck at them or screech at them. Broody hens are also at risk for getting mites and lice, because they stay in the nest all day where these infestations are common. This is when an easily preventable or treatable problem like mites and lice can turn fatal, as a broody hen will just sit and suffer in her nest.
If your hen turns broody in the height of summer, a poorly designed or poorly ventilated chicken coop could cause the egg box to heat up too much, putting your hen at risk of heat exhaustion. The easiest one to try first is to gently pry your chicken from her nest and put her outside with the rest of her flock.
I throw out some treats, set her down on the ground, and encourage her to scratch and peck in the yard. I add a few logs, branches, or upside-down buckets as interesting new places to roost, put a head of cabbage out for entertainment, or just dump a bowl of kitchen scraps for the flock to fling about.
I keep a large bowl in the kitchen as my countertop compost, and empty it every day in the chicken run. A disgruntled chicken may hop back into the egg box once you put her down, so if she does, simply remove her from the nest and carry her around again. If after a few tries and a few treats your broody lady is still determined to nest, try my next trick: the cold water bath.
Fill a sink or wash tub with a few inches of cold water and gently lower the chicken into the bath. Please use common sense if you live someplace with freezing cold tap water, like I do in Oregon, and turn the faucet to refreshingly cool water instead. You only need enough water to cover her chest when she sits. For good measure after doing Methods 1 or 2 above, I also lock my broody out of the coop; I do this when I know my other chickens have already laid an egg for the day.
Miss Broody will usually pace outside the door, crying, demanding to be let back in to nest. Before sunset, I unlock the coop so the flock can tuck themselves in for the night.
The broody hen may make a beeline for the egg box. If this happens, transfer her onto the roost. The next morning, you might find her wandering around with her flock… or you might find her nesting again.
Repeat the cold water bath, lock her out of the coop, and manually place her on the roost again that night. If your chicken runs out to greet you in the morning and goes about her daily scratching and pecking, she might be back to her normal self. But keep an eye on her throughout the day, as I actually did find my chicken back in the egg box that afternoon. In my case, I used a medium-sized dog kennel.
It came with a separate wire panel that could be attached inside to divide the space for puppy training. It also had a plastic mat underfoot, which I removed. The goal of chicken jail is to make your broody as bored and uncomfortable as possible — no nesting areas, no warm dark cozy corner to hide in. In place of the plastic mat, I laid down the wire panel, which had a smaller grid and offered a little more foot grip.
A sheet of hardware cloth also works well for flooring. Place your chicken inside the kennel with plenty of food and water, and leave her in there all day and all night. She does not roost with the rest of the flock, nor does she get her own roost. I put the kennel inside our enclosed run, as it gets good dappled light and a soft cool breeze throughout the day mitigating her desire to nest. It offers protection from predators but still feels social, as my other chickens like to hang around it.
In the morning, let your broody out and observe her behavior. If she runs immediately to the egg box, back into chicken jail she goes.
If she starts scratching the ground and interacting with the other chickens, success! It took my chicken two-and-a-half days of chicken jail before I was able to break her broodiness. When I let my chicken out on that third morning, she happily bounded out of the kennel and started dust bathing in the mulch. She ate out of my hand again and ran after every mealworm I threw out. Just make sure they continue to eat, drink, and socialize, and watch for that first egg to pop out! The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook is my latest book.
Garden Betty is where I write about modern homesteading, farm-to-table cooking, and outdoor adventuring — all that encompass a life well-lived outdoors.
After all, the secret to a good life is Read more ». Kind of related question, I have a broody hen and have noticed she is beening very mean to the two other girls, when she comes outside. She is not 1 one hen as far as I can tell.
I feel like the other two have become more afraid of me also. Running or moving away from me, which is not normal for them. Do you have any advice? Thank you for the tips! For the jail, what do you do if it is not warm at night 20ss is it ok to leave them out all night? Will it work to just do during the day? For today I have just locked the coop and they are in the run. As soon as you identify broody behavior, get to work on stopping it. The longer a hen is broody, the longer it takes her to snap out of it.
There are many techniques out there for how to broody break, but many of them are ineffective or even inhumane. The best, easiest for both of you! A broody breaker pen is basically a wire bottomed cage.
It can be a rabbit hutch, a dog crate, or something of your own construction. It will need to be raised off the floor, to allow air to circulate underneath. Your broody hen will live in the broody box with food and water, but no bedding.
Broody hens prefer small, dark, private areas where they can snuggle up in the nest and incubate eggs. Be sure to keep the broody breaker pen somewhere with lots of natural daylight. It is essential to keep her in the broody breaker pen until she is fully back to her normal self. You can always test this by letting her out of the pen and watching her. If she gets all puffed up and hightails it for the closest nest she can find, right back in the pen she goes!
The answer is no. Read more about Ordering Chickens Online. But there is a way you can try to trigger broodiness, you might even do it accidentally. The best way to do it is to leave a pile of eggs. The other reason is I prefer giant fluffy heritage breed chickens like Wyandottes. Even with a whole box of eggs, there are chickens that will never go broody. I do know that the high production hybrid breeds have been bred to lose this behavior.
When a chicken goes broody she stops laying and if your goal is to have lots and lots of eggs to eat and sell, broodiness is a bad trait. There are breeds that are known for going broody and they are certainly a good place to start. In my experience, it comes down to the individual bird over the breed. Which of course you can not predict. Some of the top breeds known for going broody are Orpingtons, Silkies, Cochins, and Brahmas. The majority of my successful broody moms are Wyandottes, Marans, and Easter Eggers.
Blind Chicken was a BLR that raised a clutch for 6 consecutive years, she only stopped when she went blind.
The hen that took over my mail-order guinea keets is also a BLR. Read more about Easter Egger Chickens. Sit on some eggs, hatch some babies. Seems easy right? You need all of these things to happen without the prospective mother killing any babies.
One of my Brahmas goes broody like clockwork but I have to break her every time. The first time she went broody I let her sit, she did a great job and then started killing the chicks as they hatched. I can say that I have better luck letting the hens take charge, a lot less shrink wrapping, and overall healthier chicks. Hatching is hard business and there will always be some potential for fatalities. On the other hand, I have chickens that deserve gold medals.
That Wyandotte I mentioned earlier was sitting on a nest and hatched one chick the same day my guinea keets came in the mail. I moved her to a small pen with her chick and carefully snuck the keets in a few at a time. She took them all over without a second thought. I have an 8ish-year-old bantam EE that has never shown interest in sitting but this year she raised 6 chicks and even tried to steal a few from another hen. My bantam blue laced red Wyandotte is now becoming broody as is my bantam silver laced Wyandotte.
I guess my next step is letting them in the nesting boxes and putting frozen veggies under them. Last ditch effort will be jail for all involved. After that, maybe freezer camp. The Buff Orpington has been broken of her broodiness. The bantam Wyandotte figured out to squeeze between the frozen veggies and the back of the nesting box to squat.
I will put 2 bags in the nesting boxes tomorrow. Should I try that for a few days? Now my bantam Ancona has gone out in sympathy! Hello, I have two frizzles who went broody, so after a few days of them sitting on the nest I gave them a cool water bath. After I released them they just dried out naturally and totally forgot about being broody.
They are now behaving normally, except have not begun laying yet. I ordered some day-old chicks none of them orphington and snuck them in the nesting box with her one night after stealing her clutch. She pecked each of them once scared me and me a lot more par for the course. Then she settled in on them and immediately the next day she was out as a proud momma!
Overall a big success except that my flock is now too big and I have to figure out who to get rid of! Great Article! My Hen just started this behavior. I think I will try the ice bottle method. Cannot go too extreme, because I have four other hens that use the box to lay their eggs. How long do I leave the chicks with her and stop the brooding. I got 4 other baby chicks from an incubator and put them with her so they would have a mom but she pecked them and chased them away. The only time she accepted them was if she was sitting on them so I have them in a nest in the house.
If I take her own chicks away how long will it take her to stop brooding? Great article and advice! We have a small flock 4 hens with usually great production. One of my Golden Comets decided to start laying on the eggs and became quite broody. I plan on keeping her separated for at least a week. Will post back on success or otherwise. Thank you ALL for the great comments and suggestions! I have a broody pekin bantam. I will try the frozen peas under her and will report back. Hi, I have a broody Buff Orpington and we tried the cold pack method and when we went to let them out this morning she had pulled all the feathers off her chest.
Is this normal? Also, we blocked off the nesting boxes for the day and she is not happy. Thanks for your advice! I have 15 chickens, now 5 are setting. Can I put all five in a large dog crate? I have heard that fertal eggs are better to eat and also expand my flock. I know this means I need a rooster. Is there an artical I can get information about this? I have a bantam hen and she was broody last year. If we shut down the area she goes crazy and flys on top of the roof.
If we take her put she is constantly clucking and being really mean to our other bantam. If we let her have chicks will she fight with the other bantam? I always put them in a sack one at a time and spin them round my head about ten times. Often works! They stagger out and have forgotten their pasts! My Orpington just became broody. I moved her out of the coop away from my other hens and put her in her own coop with a few fertile eggs. She was weirded out and is sleeping on the ground instead of sitting on the eggs.
Since this is the 1st day should I give her a few days to see if she goes to box to sit or should I put eggs on ground under her? Hello, my mum has 2 Plymouth rocks. One called felicity has started showing baldness on her chest and she puffed out her feathers at me today just for being close to her. The bald patch is looking quite red and sore now.
The other one, Susan, was showing a bald patch on the chest shortly afterwards but not as severe. I believe both have stopped laying now. We have 2 other brown chickens which are unaffected. Any ideas how to help her? Hi, Since a month I have an Old English Game hen and another white cross hen, both about a year old and were quite good together and were very good in laying eggs.
Now I started to notice that the OEG went more often to the nest, started to puff up, and laying around a lot. She seemed the whole time very timid. Now all of a sudden she became this killer machine.
So I had put her in a water bath, and tried again in the coop. This morning I had to ran out and rescue the other hen again. Our OEG has turned and is extremely aggressive. I have her now in a box separate if my other hen. How long can I separate them? Or is there no way back? Thanks Kim. Just FYI: one of my hens went broody about 3 weeks ago. I tried your suggestions where I could. She was determined!
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