This broody hen is enough to make me crazy!

[imacowgirl2]

Everyone meet Broody…the crazy hen that makes me want to pull my hair out!

She went broody in early April…great, we will give her some fertile eggs. Grafting her to a ground nest was a complete non-event. On April 8 we had three chicks hatch…but she was setting on fertile eggs and had only been setting a couple days so we kept them in the brooder.

Fast forward three weeks to April 24…her eggs don’t hatch. Give them a few more days — both turn out to be rotten. The baby chicks have been integrated into the coop for a few days now and everyone is great, except a few days later we lose one of the chicks. Decide to give broody a couple non-fertile eggs and see if she will set another week, as we have chicks due to arrive from a hatchery the week of May 1. She sets strong…but then we get the news that our chicks have been delayed a week.

Decide we might as well let her continue to set…if she holds out for another week, we will give her chicks when they get here; if she doesn’t, they’ll go in the brooder. That was last weekend. Over the past 7 days she has been getting off the nest more often…and was getting increasingly aggressive to the two chicks, who are now about four weeks old - to the point of coming off her nest to chase them aggressively any time she saw them, and chasing them into their hidey holes and even all around the yard. We closed her nest door a couple days to give them a break, and then by Thursday she had gotten so bad we decided to put them back in the brooder in the garage. Yesterday it was pretty hot in the garage, and is only going to get hotter this week…so we set up a small cage in the coop for them yesterday afternoon and moved them in.

I was cleaning in the coop this afternoon and they were out of food and water in their cage and she was nowhere in sight, so I set them on the coop floor to eat and drink out of the hens feeder and waterer while I went to the house to get water to refill their waterer.

I came back to the picture above…and that was an hour ago. Apparently the chicks she was so determined to kill the past couple of days are now hers in her mind?!?!? She was making mama hen noises to them and they were happily tucked up under her wings (a rain storm came through and drastically reduced the temp very quickly just a few mins before I snapped this picture) and she was fluffing up at any hen that came to close to them at the feeder

So I’m guess I’m back to raising the chicks that are coming this week in the brooder…unless she changes her mind again

This whole broody hen thing has been a trip so far…

 

[azygous]

There is no such thing as a sane and sensible broody hen. They are all nuts. Even their flock mates get annoyed by them.

This crazy broody hen of yours is mostly governed by her hormones. Over the course of three weeks, from the time she goes broody to the time eggs are expected to hatch in that time, her hormones are changing toward the end of that period to cause her to switch from incubating eggs to nurturing chicks. And that's the stage she's in right now.

You are wise to be resigned to brooding the new batch of chicks yourself since this gal is now determined to raise these half grown chicks, and if you gave her new babies, she would very likely reject them since her hormones have moved on.