Every time I went to check for eggs one of my Buff Orpingtons was sitting in the same nest.
At least that’s what I figured out after about three days of it. Same hen. Same nest.
I would collect her egg and she wouldn’t leave. She was also more vocal and protective of her spot, making a guttural croaking sound whenever I got near and pecking at my hand when I felt for the egg. Just one little peck, but they usually don’t bother.
It dawned on me that she had “gone broody.”
She fluffs her feathers up and crouches down on her nest all day. When I pick her up and put her out in the chicken yard she sits there for a few moments, as if she were in a trance. Some of the Australorps pick on her, sensing something different about her.
Most people who don’t want to hatch out any chicks want to get that hen off the nest and back to business.
The most common techniques involve separating her from nests, nesting material, and places where she can get warm and cozy. Putting them in cages where air can circulate around them is also key, apparently. Some even dunk them in water. I’m not going to try that.
I’m not sure what the harm is in broodiness besides the fact that she has stopped laying, except I heard one person say their hen died from lack of food and water. Anyone hear of that?
So she continues her futile vigil on her imaginary eggs and I keep putting her outside a couple of times a day to make sure she gets a little sustenance. I hope when her 21 days is up, if not sooner, she gets back with the program.
I hope she gets over it, poor thing! My husband is just finishing up our chicken house and I can’t wait to move them in it. I too have Buffs. This picture is perfect.
i have a big, big old buff who goes broody pretty frequently and she’s nasty about me “stealing” her eggs, but she does fine. she’s two years old and has gone broody three times already! she’s lucky i’m not a culler! i actually think i won’t go with buff orps in future. i have one that molts at the drop of a hat and another that’s broody all the time and i lost a third to a wasting disease. i seem to have much better luck with the other breeds.
i had a year-old welsummer also go broody this spring for a very short period of time. i let them be, make sure they haven’t got any eggs under them (because i don’t want them making a bunch of hybrid [rooster] babies), and bring them a little corn once in a while for a treat (because i love them, not because they don’t feed themselves). broody hens will get off the nest a couple times each day to eat, drink, and move their bowels.
Hens can harm themselves by being broody for too long. If she gives up after a while, well and good. But some broodies stay broody for a very long time, and really do starve themselves. I have also had some broodies who turn vicious trying to protect their nest. That’s when I’d have to intervene. My preferred method was putting them in a wire bottomed cage with food and water for a couple days – until they seemed more like themselves. I had a rabbit hutch that worked well for that, unless it was currently being used (with a wooden nest box in it) for someone who was already raising her family.
Do you have roosters? If so, let her hatch her babies, that’s what the broodiness is all about after all.
We’ve only had one hen go fully into brooding mode. We’d forcibly remove her from the nesting box and put her on the far side of the pen. She’d usually poop, stop at the water bucket for a good long drink, stop by the feeder for a bite or two, and then return to her spot. We figured she was getting the sustenance she needed to stay alive, and that was good enough. Right after her broody episode, and before she started to lay eggs again, she molted. Just when her feathers began to come back in and she started to look like a healthy and loved pet again (but still no eggs yet), a hawk ate her. Poor little Vanilla….
I forgot to mention, one of the side-effects of being broody is that the hen will at some point stop laying. After all, she needs all her eggs to hatch about the same time, so she can’t keep adding to the nest indefinitely. If you depend on her egg, you might want to change her mind about broodiness before her hormones kick in too far.
I found this link to broody chickens. Had some interesting tips from others raising hens.
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/farmlife/msg081210089458.html
I don’t know much about hens but I hope she doesn’t do herself any harm by being broody…however I am glad you have decided not to dunk her in water as this just sounds cruel!!!
I will keep my fingers crossed that she stays healthy.
I’ve heard that all you need to do is introduce a rooster!! Let her breed, and she’ll go back to normal.
Hello Ms. Mater Lady,
We share similar fates with chickens. Our first litter (you’ll see why i call them “first” in a moment) of chickens we adopted were buff orps. We have 3 of these ladies of laying still around after two years. Last year, about the time of their 1st hatchday, Merangue’s nesting instincts kicked in. It was all we could do to get her out of the nest–she was even deficating in it as she was too stubborn to leave. After trying to remove her from the nest 4-5 times a day for a week (use an old t-shirt or something to cover her head while you remove her–she’ll be put into trance and won’t peck at you), we hadn’t any luck breaking her will. So, we had this brilliant idea that if we got some fertile eggs, she could hatch them. And for 3 weeks, we waited with baited breath. Each day i would take her a handful of something from the garden and a cup of oats with millet and hulled sunflower seeds. After i would feed her this, i’d rest the water up on the ledge for her to drink. She just wouldn’t leave the nest at first. Then toward the 3rd week, she would start to leave for 15 minutes tops when her sissy’s would go out for chicken recess in the mornings.
Alas, something didn’t go as planned with the eggs, and we didn’t have any hatchlings after 23 days. So, we thought that we’d need to break her some other way–by adopting more chicks. Oy! We’re we fools! She wasn’t pleased with those babies (or us) and we ended up have to force her to live with her sissies in another part of our coop –where she took to another nest in there–where they would remain for 8 months while the chicks grew up. She broke her broodiness about 5 weeks after her initial coup (ha). Then about two weeks later, she took to the nest again. This chicken is my beloved Merangue…we decided we would just deal with her as long as the others did follow suit.
Fast forward, approximately 11 months later….we have 7 chickens now, Merangue is still with us and Lo! and behold for the first time since last May, she laid two eggs for us last week.
Bottom line is if you can get her to break, you’ll be a better chicken whisperer than most of us. Who knows what they’re thinking in those little bird brains of theirs!
Good luck with your efforts! Maybe, if nothing else, you can find someone who needs good, broody hens for their farm. Maybe work a trade???
Fondly,
Whit
I don’t have any roosters; I’ve still had hens go broody. One in particular—Little Chicken–I just take her of the nest and put her outside with scraps, greens, etc. I have to do it for a while—eventually she stops.
Our neighbor ‘s hen went broody on imaginary eggs and sat there. Didn’t stop being broody until he let her hatch some eggs. Most hens will get up for about an hour a day to eat, poop, and get water. We have a broody hen right now and when we open the door, she’s out that door faster than any of the others, but within 20 or so minutes, she’s back. Removing her from the nest is the easiest way to get them to snap out of it, she won’t ever quit unless chicks hatch, and even then, some will go right back to being broody. From what I’ve read, you have to lock them out of the nesting box to get them to quit brooding, otherwise they’ll just go right back to it.
My mother always put golfballs in the nest of broody hens and let them wait it out.
This brought back some memories for me as it was always my chore as a child to gather the eggs and I how terrified I was of the broody hens pecking me. I had a special stick that I would use to gently move them off the nest so I could gather their eggs, and they were never happy about it!
Being broody is a hormonal thing that I am more tolerant about than my husband. He is very brusque and hauls them off the nest every time he walks past. I just shrug my shoulders and think she’ll get over it and only pull her off the nest for feed time in the morning and the afternoon. Craig is very pragmatic about livestock and their job to produce eggs in the most economical time of their life span ie: feed to produce ratio (remembering that just like humans, chickens have a set ammount of ova and once they are laid thats it). I would have to agree with him though that if a chook was going broody all the time and not laying eight months of the year, then she would be gone. Some breeds are notoriously broody and thats a good thing when you want tobe raising chickens, especially for meat, but I like an Australorp myself. Good egg or meat breed and hardy.
I have a Cochin with broody tendencies. I “cured” her of this by moving her into another chicken house where I keep my young not-yet-laying chickens. She immediately stopped the constant nest-sitting and after a week started laying eggs again, without sitting too long. The young ones seem to enjoy her motherly attentions. I enjoy your blog!
So far none of my 5 have gone ”broody” and they just turned a year old in March. I’d been getting only 4 eggs for much of the year—we weren’t sure if one of the chickens was a rooster or not since we only got 4 eggs from 5 birds. LOL. Guess what ? Two weeks ago we started getting 5 eggs a day. I suspect that our ‘”scrawny thin one” has finally gotten fat enough to start laying her eggs. She was the runt. Hee hee. Now she can hold her own. I was taught, as a youngster, that when you get a broody hen and don’t want her to be broody, to put her in a wire bottom cage with plenty of cross breezes and no nest box for a couple of weeks, just be sure she feeds and eats while in confinement. Keep us posted on your progress with her !
I have had a broody hen. I went on the internet and spent hours on what to do. I removed her from her nest every time I went into the coop. Fearful that she hadn’t eaten or drank all day.
I put her into a wire cage and when I finally let her go, she went back to brooding. I even took a 5 gallon bucket and put water in it and dunked her into it. Just up to the top of her wings. She liked it! It was like a spa treatment for her!
She finally stopped after a long time, I think I lost almost 2 months of laying with this one.
So if you find a way, please post it, I know for sure she probably will start again soon.
IMO, going broody is part of the natural cycle of things. Yes, you loose some laying time. BUT if you have enough hens, it’s not the end of the world to just factor into your flock numbers that once in a while, a hen will go broody. I’ve read all sorts of “solutions” and ways to kick them of the habit, but I think that most “success” stories about that are just good timing. When my hens go broody, I’ll let them. They won’t have any eggs to set on, but I won’t be trying any tricks to stop them either. At least that’s my decision at this point. So far, none of my girls have gone broody on me. From what I can tell, it doesn’t hurt them. Part of my reasoning for having hens for eggs was that I was allowing my hens to live their life naturally, and not in the “forced” manner that battery hens live theirs. I think being broody is just part of their nature. I also don’t use lights to extend productivity into winter.
Today after spending much time researching the web on the “topic of brooding hens” I decided to go out and remove our brooder from her nest of unfertile eggs (including one questionable duck egg my son had slipped under her some 6 wks ago) by now I had assumed it too was also bunk… low and behold when I picked up that duck egg it felt like a mexican jumping bean in my hand and with-in minutes, before our very eyes it made its first crack in the egg shell!! We have returned it to the nest were the hen has taken up nesting on it again. Now I am wondering, will a chicken “mother” a baby Muskovy duckling and will it be able to survive utilizing the the tehniques taught by the hen, or should I step in to raise the duckling? Obviously I will also be providing food and water, and would prefer to watch this hen finish the job. What do you guys think??
Mamagreen–I did a search “can a hen raise ducklings” and some interesting replies popped up, some suggesting it has been done with success, with a few caveats. Perhaps the Farm Life forum on GardenWeb would have people with experience in this situation. Good luck!
I recently tried to stop my Black Austrolope Hen from brooding. She has been brooding for over 2 weeks. I tried everything in the book and then I got an idea. I found a piece of garden fencing . . . the green wire stuff with rectangular holes about 3 in x 2 in. I folded the wire into a box about 14″ long and 10″ wide with sides about 2″ high. Then I set it over the nesting area. I figured this way, if she got on the nest and laid an egg that it would go through the wire holes into the nest. That’s all it took. She has been off the nest all day just a clucking and a pecking outside the coop! Hope this works for you. I tried everything under the sun including dipping her in cool water but to no avail. This wire contraption has solved my (her) problem. Tim
I have a white Silkie hen who just went broody last week
She is so docile she just chatters at me a bit when I move her off of her nest.
She has no eggs to hatch but continues to “sit”. I have to move her outside every morning and have begun closing the hen house door to force her outside. She is the only hen and her 4 nearly grown chicks can stay outside with her. The weather is nice and maybe she’ll get over the harmonal stage soon.
Two of her nearly grown chicks are roosters and I need to find homes for them (other than the stew pot). The are white purebred Silkies and very docile and nice pets. They have not ever started crowing yet. Any takers in the Memphis, TN area ??? email me at kathryncmiller@comcast.net
My grandma always said her mother would take a broody hen and put her inside a large gunny sack and fold over the top and hang it up with clothespins on the clothesline over night… The hen will be so fightin mad she’ll snap out of her broodiness by morning…
i have broody hen at home the size of hen is normal i put 15 eggs under her for hatching now she is sitting on the eggs the problem is that i not see that she came out of nest for feeding himself so please tell me how she will feed.
tariq rashid–I would trust her natural instincts. She (and her sisters) have been doing this for all time, and they will do what they need to do when they need to do it. Setting hens have been observed taking a couple of minutes off the nest from time to time. Perhaps she is doing it while no one is looking.
It is actually common for hens to die during broodiness. Being broody is actually very stressful for chickens but they are among the best mothers in the animal world so going without food and water for days is very common if they feel it needs to be done to hatch their non existent babies. unfortunately many of us avid chichave owners have found the once broody hen didn’t survive … So please don’t assume it’s normal and you don’t need to remove her from the nest. Death is a normal cycle too as is illness but we don’t want that! A sitting hen should be removed twice a day to eat and drink. Do not bring food and water to her as she needs to use her muscles and move. She is also more prone to mites and illness if left to simply lay in the nest.
The dunking water trick means just their belly. Not the whole hen and that is in hopes of cooling the belly to break up the horomal cycle.
I personally am able to break my silkies ONLY by bringing them inside to the bathroom. Nothing else works. They would rather die than leave the nest. They actually would stay broody forever–three months one went before I tried the bathroom trick. (she would eat when i removed her from the nest) Two days in the bathroom and she snapped out of it. Chickens can’t count. All of them don’t know the gestation period is only 21 days.
We have three beautiful chickens. Ethel, our Road Island Red has gone broody. This has lastest over a month, so….we ordered fertile eggs for her, seperated her from the others for her saftey, and use our dog house for her ” brooding Pen.” I put one of my other chickens eggs under her until our arrive. I take her out of the nest 2xs a day and she feeds and waters. She sat for 3 weeks on an empty nest, tried the water dunking, and moved her to the dog kennel for days too. She wants babies so we will do our best to help her…she doesn’t give up easy. That’s why we call ourselves the funny farm. Wish us and Ethel luck!!
I have a lovely silver laced wyandotte who went broody over a month ago. I was waiting it out, in hopes that she would give up, but then decided to get some fertile eggs to sit on(we don’t have a rooster). Last night, when i came home from the holiday weekend, with a basket full of fertile eggs for her, she was not well. She ran out of the chicken coop and fell over, unable to get up. Then a minute later she would get up and run again and crash into the fence, or do a face plant. I am not sure if it is lack of food and water, or lack of exercise, or a combination there of. I have brought her inside and am giving her water with an eye dropper, which she is taking, but she still seems very crazed. What i have read above is very useful, but further advise welcome (for getting her back to health if she makes it)
Thanks
cuckoo–I’ve never experienced this before. If you haven’t already, see if you can find any help over at the backyardchickens forum. They’ve got lots of chicken advice. You may want to call the local ag coop, seed store, vets, etc. for assistance. Hope she gets better soon.
My Broody chicken Ethel, was sitting on an empty nest for a month, we now have 6 fertile eggs for her…no rooster here…we seperated the chicken yard and added a big double dog house we had….put doors on it, she now has her own little area and sits on her eggs faithfully all day. I take her out twice a day, she is fine with that, she eats and drinks then heads back to her eggs. The other chicken aren’t being very nice to her but she is safe divided from them. I worry about her eating but she nest on the ground when I bring her out so I just keep picking her up until she realizes there is food. Don’t think she would ever leave the nest if I didn’t do it!! Hoping her eggs hatch, if they don’t….I’m getting her baby chicks!!
PS…we are on day 6, only 15 more days to go!!
Well, we are at day 19 for Broody Hen Ethel. She has been an amazing mama. I take her off the nest twice a day, she never pecks at me…I cover her (now 5 eggs) with a tortilla warmer so the eggs don’t get cold and she has some time to eat, dust and poop! I never leave her alone as the other chickens are not being very nice to her. She just puffs up her wings and does “her thing” then I put her back in the nest after I remove the warmer.
I decided yesterday to “candle” her eggs to make sure she has some babies after all her hard work…that is NOT easy!!! Some of the eggs we ordered were very dark and heavy shelled, so very hard to see through…after inspecting and candling all the eggs, we still aren’t sure this has worked…I’ll try one more time to day but I do smell that maybe one is rotten. By Wed. if we don’t have babies we will BUY them for her and put them under her beautiful wings…Will let you all know how it goes??? Truly a lesson in love and patience!
FF–Aww. I hope she has something to show for all her efforts. Please let us know how it goes and if she takes to her substitutes if the eggs don’t hatch.
🙁 no baby chicks for our Broody Hen Ethel…she still sits faithfully on her 5 eggs and today is day 22…she has been broody for almost 3 months now…tomorrow we are buying 3 new day old baby chicks for her….call us crazy but she needs something to show for being such a good mommy…I think she knows time is up because she gently peck me today when I looked at her eggs….she never does that!! Guess by day 22 we should have something happening??
FF–She deserves them, definitely. And a cookie.
Thanks Tomato Lady, what a bummer…so much work for us all…will let you know how she takes to the baby chicks…they are ready tomorrow…:)
Hello All, when we went to get Ethel’s day old baby chicks at the feed store a lady told us it would not work because the babies would not know Ethels “cluck?” So she gave us 10 eggs her hen had been sitting on and today, 11 days later, we have a baby chick!!! It was such fun to hear the peeps and pipping in the eggs, just waiting now to see how many hatch…we really didn’t plan on 10….LOL
FF–Never heard about the cluck factor. Interesting. How exciting about the chick! Does she wuv it?
Today we have 6 adorable 5 week old baby chicks…as I always believed, Ethel has been the BEST mommy ever!!! This has been quite the experience…I just hope we have all hens…LOL…and no more Broody Hens…enough already!!! We are enlarging the coop too…they love to free range part of the day but trying to get 6 chicks back in the coop is not easy!!! Hope this helped anyone that finds a chicken sitting on her eggs with no Rooster around!!
HELP! My little chicken will not come out, her pecking is nasty and she also fluffs herself up and goes nuts, so vocal.
Have noticed that she isn’t eating or drinking!!!! I have a dog cage, would this be any good to put her in. I have already lost one chicken by either a fox or other in daylight, so am scared to leave her out? Any help would be well appreciated.
Cheers Nina 🙁
Nina–She sounds like a pretty typical broody–very determined! Have you applied for help from the folks over at the Backyard Chickens forum? They can be very helpful, and I know they have some threads devoted to broody hens. There’s lots of good reading on that site. I hope it works out!
Nina, try to read my earlier post on how we tried to manage our broody hen…is she still laying, or does she want to sit on her eggs??? Everything I learned was from the internet…good sources out there. Good luck, Broody Hens are so sad to see, we are glad we finally got ours some fertile eggs and she is a mommy now!!
Hi all, I am fairly new to keeping chickens. I have had 5 silkies since april’12 and so far 4 of them are or have been broody. It started with Ginger, she was in the nest box sitting on no eggs for 2 weeks, i kicked her out and closed access to the nest box. She got so wound up and it was confusing the other chickens as they were looking for and found other places to lay. So i put her in a box with a wire bottom, she ended up getting really upset and frustrated, i was worried bout her hurting herself as she was head butting the sides and the top. Finally i decided to dunk her in cold water, I felt horrible but after the 8th time she did get the hint and snapped out of it. The newest problem is that as i said earlier the others were lookin for somewhere to lay, the littlest and tamest of the lot Lilly found her new nesting spot in a dark corner in my kitchen. I must admit i thought it was adorable, I was stupid thinking that giving her cuddles I was just bonding with her but she now has gone broody! And very clingy with me. I have stopped her from getting inside apart from the front porch which has a very cold marble floor. Today i have discovered that Pinky is broody and is in the nesting box, so Cilla has now made a nest in my cupboard in the front porch and is now screaming at any other chicken that goes anywhere near. So out of the 5 silkies i have 1 has successfully been dunked and broodiness broken, but 3 others are now broody! I know I have been too soft with them but do not know how to stop this cycle. Please can someone HELP!!!!!!
Yipes….I only had on broody chicken…after trying all of the above, we got her fertile eggs…her chicks are now 7 weeks old and so far…keeping my fingers crossed…none of my other two Road Island Reds have gone broody! I think if it happens again…instead of spending 3 months trying to break the broodiness I would just get 5 fertile eggs and let her have her babies…they are adorable and she is still a wonderful mom…we do have a large coop, I seperated part of it with a fence so she could brood on her eggs and have her babies in the made over dog house….it was sooooo much easier than all I went through trying to break the broodiness…after 4 weeks the babies joined the other chicks and we have eggs again….don’t know yet if we have a Rooster with my baby chicks…that is another problem we may face in a few months!!! I got my fertile eggs from a nearby chicken farmer…my first 5 came “mail order” Ethel…ma ma chick set on them for 21 days…nothing…so I suggest finding a local farmer that you know have REAL fertile eggs, good luck…we are new at this and boy am i getting an education on chickens!!
I have a broody Rhode Island for the past 10 days. She has not laid an egg since she started her broodiness. Is that normal? I’ve finally separated her from her nest and put her in a fenced off yard I built for my younger chicks. She does not have access to a nest, but she has a 10 x 12 ft grassy , shady yard with water and food.
It’s pretty warm in our area. 85 to 95 degrees. She mostly hunkers down until she gets up to drink or eat. The other 4 chickens are doing well, and they usually find shady places to hang out (under the chicken coop is cool or in our little wetlands area in the back yard). I’m just hoping that separating her like this will work. I do have a dog crate that I may end up using if this doesn’t stop her from brooding.
Susan–Yes, it is normal for them to stop laying when they’re broody. Good luck with your method. It sounds like it might work, but it still may take her a while. They can be very persistent.
I spent 2 months of worry about our Rhode Island hen Ethel when she went Broody. We just wanted 3 hens and some eggs…finally after water dunk, seperation, knowing she was loosing weight we got her fertile eggs…she hatched them…6 little babies…she loved and cared for them….now they are big enough to be on their own and she is once again laying eggs daily….now we have have 9 chickens and just this morning we heard a ” cock a doole do” looks like we have a Rooster in the mix…that is a whole different story…they are persistent…I wish I had just got her the eggs 2 months earlier!! Good luck, let me know how it goes.
Debbie…get a Rooster!!! Then they will all be happy!!!
After reading all your posts on how to get your hens to quit brooding I decided to try putting my hen in the lid to one of those plastic storage bens. Water isn’t deep and it is available all the time for them to drink or get in if they want. I put my 2 hens in ankle deep water. One drank and got out the other stood as if she was in a trance for 5 minutes and then got out and drank. Then they both ate, I am hoping they don’t go back to brooding. Crossing my fingers. Thanks for the suggestions. Mine have been brooding for 5 to 6 weeks.
LOL, isn’t it amazing all the things we do to try to help our little chickens? I’m not sure I worked this hard training my 3 children!!! I did try the water, it works for some folks, my hen Ethel was just way too determined!! Her babies are now all grown chickens…6 in all…we never planned on having more than 3 hens….and as luck would have it we have 1 Rooster….so we love them all….really don’t know what to do with them…but I’m sure they will teach us….I really wish you luck with the broody hens….let us know how it works!! Sandi
Well, Ethel decided to go “Broody” again. Found her sitting on two eggs and doing the “cluck cluck”……So I put her in the dog kennel for two days and nights…she stopped her brooding, still hasn’t gone back to laying eggs, but is back to normal!! So wish I would have tried that before we got 6 more chickens from her last brooding!