In all our years of keeping chickens, we’ve never had a hen go broody, but our Plymouth Barred Rock, Florence has decided it’s time to be a mama. What does this mean? It means she sits on the nest all day and all night, leaving only once a day for some water and a little food. She does this even if there are no eggs underneath her. See how flat her body is? She’s maximizing her body heat for full coverage of the eggs. And when I come to take the eggs out, I have to carry a long flat stick, which I use to block her mouth - she is viciously guarding her eggs and retaliates by pecking my hand, hard. It hurts!
She also fluffs up her tail and neck, hunches down prepared to spring, and makes a low noise in her throat. And check out that evil eye. I talk to her soothingly and tell her she would have been such a good mother, but for some reason that doesn’t stop her from lashing out. As you know, we have no rooster and never will, which means she can sit on her eggs until kingdom come and they still won’t hatch (as they are not fertilized).
When a hen is broody, she doesn’t lay eggs. And another rather unfortunate thing is that it is causing the other hens to stop laying eggs. They have not gone broody, but they are acting decidedly different and we are getting only three eggs per day rather than six. I’m afraid another hen will follow Florence’s example and then we’ll really be in a pickle.
However, I’m of two minds about all this. We use a lot of eggs and we miss having so many, but on the other hand I believe that the hens should live as normal a life as they can in our urban backyard. This means plenty of room to hop, run, bathe and stretch. This means foraging for greens and bugs from the compost pile. This means no artificial lights in the winter (which keeps the birds laying when they are supposed to be having a break from laying). And this also means letting them express their chicken-ness, which is a thing harder to define, and can also be inconvenient. For instance, this past Sunday morning some sort of predator got in the run (I think I saw a hawk fly out of there when I ran out to see what was wrong). I knew there was trouble because the chickens warned me with their extremely loud squawking at 7 a.m. They were SUPER loud and SUPER freaked out, and my shushing didn’t stop them from making a terrible ruckus for at least 30 minutes. I was sure the neighbors were going to confront me, but no one did (I have such great neighbors). This is what chickens DO when they are scared. They huddle, stare, and squawk. It’s just the way it works.
And apparently, another way chickens work is to go broody. There ARE ways to break them of this, and one common one is to take them out of the nesting box and put them in a wire cage for a few days so they cannot nest. I could do this. We have a cage like this. But it just doesn’t feel right to me. I’ve read that chickens stop being broody quite suddenly after 21 days, the amount of time it would have taken to hatch a clutch of eggs. Florence has been broody for about half that time, so we have a good 10-12 days of this yet to go. It’s hard to just let her express her chicken-ness.
Here’s another interesting behavior: When Florence comes down that one time each day to eat and drink, she does the cutest thing. While walking around taking care of her physical needs, she clucks softly and constantly, as though she is herding chicks - albeit chicks that are nonexistent. It’s quite adorable, and completely at odds with the demon who sits on the nest and waits for my tender hand to creep under her to steal her “babies.”
Have any of you dealt with broody hens? What sorts of things have you tried, successfully or un, to break them of the habit? Am I silly for just letting it linger on?
***UPDATE 5/8/20 After reading the comments my readers left, I decided to take some light action. I started taking Florence off the nest regularly. I collected the eggs in an extremely timely manner. I took Florence out of the nest and put her on to the roosting bar at night. I sometimes closed the coop door to keep all the chickens in but Florence - she was alone in the run. I think the game-changing moment came when I took her off the nest one night and put her on the roosting bar and then blocked access to the nesting boxes. That way she had to come down FIRST that next morning instead of going right to the boxes. Also collecting the eggs numerous times a day so that she can’t sit on them, helped a lot. I think we are over the hump and are back to getting 5-6 eggs per day. Thanks to all that commented!!!