Sometimes They Nest… Some More!

Seriously you need to address this straightaway. For one thing, both birds are likely to go off lay because, it is suspected, of pheromonal signals. Second, a broody hen has no regard for her own welfare and will happily starve and go thirsty.

It goes against my own grain to stop them, because all methods seem cruel to a degree. But I’ve had five attempts from our birds to go broody and so far each has been stopped within 24 hours by taking out the broody bird, dousing her breast feathers with cold water spray, and then putting her into a dog cage carrier so that she is uncomfortable and cannot sit properly.

Betty, our hen I notice you link to, wasn’t actually broody. She had a condition that most poultry keepers would have acted upon discovery of it by killing the affected bird. It’s called abdominal dropsy and the vet told us the likely cause of this – the muscles on the belly not knitting together properly – was being helped out of the egg by the breeder.

You’re lucky she’s not being violent – some hens can peck and create quite a fuss if you intervene when they’re sitting!

We had two choices. One, have her put down last summer or let her live and keep an eye on how it developed knowing that eventually she could meet a sticky end. She got a happy additional eight or so months of life, doing her natural things, before she was unfortunately hurt by curious hens pecking at her undercarriage. And at that point she had to be helped on her way.

But I don’t regret giving her those extra months. She was a very sweet hen and was able to lay eggs just fine, something the vet thought might not have happened. I know better now for buying birds, to check them for such a thing and it is very rare so hopefully we’ll never have that distress again.

Betty’s two sisters, Alexis and Wilhemina, have both been broody but were put off by the method I mention above very easily.

I forgot to add, the theory beind the cold wet breast feathers is simple and sound: they need to warm eggs using their breast feathers and chest, and can’t do that if they’re wet and cold (that area, not the whole bird!). I guess it’s like a cold shower which, while shocking, isn’t particularly harsh!

Thanks for the tips and advice Andy – you’ve been at this a lot longer than I have so I wil bear this in mind for next time. However this time Betty gave up after being scooted off a few times a day for 3 days, and is laying happily again now.

Good to hear it! Sounds like she’s not the most determined of sitters. It’s all to do with breeds, apparently. We’ve found out since buying them last year that our Light Sussex and Lavender Araucanas are infamous broodies but so far we’ve managed to put them off within a day or two. But ex-bats are supposed to not go broody at all and one of ours, the smallest, is proving very interested in raising some babies. Goes to show – you can’t breed out nature entirely (Monsanto, take note please!).

I just discovered your blog about a month ago. Love the site and the boxes. I blogged about it and put it on Facebook, have no idea how to twitter. )

I think they prefer their usual lives,but maybe here’s a solution to keeping the mice out of the chicken grains – store them in the chicken house?! Then there’s the challenge of keeping the chickens out of them between rations.

Very interesting indeed, chickens are very sensitive creatures, peculiar sometimes! Thanks for sharing this! cheers.

I hope that your hen wasn’t sick, seems like it had some problems under that condition, chickens don’t take that long to really lay an egg. Either way I hope everything is alright now!

I’m sure it was not really sick, probably just a phase? beautiful creatures these chickens are..Probably got a really small brain, but they do seem to out do themselves sometimes!

Very interesting indeed, I had no idea that chickens had issues like this! They are one tasty bunch of creatures though!!

Eggs are definitely one of the most nutritious sources that we could ever come across!but for that we need to make sure these creatures here lay them correctly!