A ? on Broodiness....

[Scott H]

Tina....



has gone broody.
We've tried removing her from the nesting box...REPEATEDLY!
We've locked her out of the coop and she made a nest in the dirt under the coop, even collected rocks as eggs.

We haven't isolated her in a wire cage and really don't want to do that so here is the ?.

Will she come out of it on her own and how long will it take?

 

[Happy Chooks]

I've had an English Orp broody all summer long. So to answer your question, not if they are stubborn about it.

I gave her eggs and she crushed the eggs with full term chicks in them. I bought chicks for her to adopt and she wouldn't accept them, my production red broody did though. I tried breaking her and she started laying for a week, then back to sitting. So now she gets nothing, I'm not going to find any more crushed chicks.

 

[gryeyes]

I have never tried to "break" a broody (nor have I wanted to) but I have roosters, so the eggs are fertile.

I frequently sell fertile "mutt" (mixed breed) eggs to folks who have a hen go broody with no rooster to fertilize eggs. We and they just like to let hens hatch chicks.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

If you can, let her hatch some eggs, it's a great experience, and you'll get healthy happy chicks and hen with little to no effort from you. You can find fertile eggs from small farmers or feed stores.

However, if you simply cannnot have more chickens right now, I have used this technique and it seemed to help break a hen from her sulking brood (she was chased off her fertile egg nest by a dominant hen and didn't settle well enough for me to want to give her any more eggs, so I didn't use her to brood this time.)

This is what I did. Every time I was out, I gently lifted her out from the nest box and set her down away from the coop in the main yard next to some really, really yummy treats that she liked. (They have to be really special treats for her that the others cannot steal from her.) It's also best if she has to walk a ways to get back to the coop and that there are enough treat so she has to linger a little to eat it all.

At first she was annoyed, but ooooh, those were her favorite treats. I kept doing this over the week, at least several times each day, and eventually I saw her out more and more so that by the end of the week she came and ran to great me with the treat bucket. Brooding was finished.

She may have just been ending her brood, but I really do think it helped. We've used positive food reinforcement for training dogs a lot, so I tried the technique with her as a chicken and I honestly think it did help. Animals are amazingly driven by their appetites.

HTH
Lady of McCamley

 

[Happy Chooks]

I have never tried to "break" a broody (nor have I wanted to) but I have roosters, so the eggs are fertile.

I usually do the same. But this Orp has had a few chances and blew it.

 

[ChirpyChicks1]

Good luck!! I haven't decided yet what I'll do if one of my chickens goes broody. I had always thought I'd try and break them but I'm going to just wait and see when the time comes.

I have read about putting a bag of ice (wrapped in a towel) under them.

 

[Scott H]

Right now she's locked out of the coop and anytime she tries to nest under it I spray the hose next to her......she's with her girlfriends right now but not really into it, if you know what I mean!
She's the bottom of the pecking order and the other two are just as happy running around without her. Kinda sad but we can't let her be a Mom as three chickens are enough on our property.

 

[Scott H]

Here's a vid back when I first took her fake eggs away and locked her out of the coop. She was gathering rocks and looked over and saw her fake eggs....

 

[ChirpyChicks1]

Your YouTube settings won't let us view the video

 

[Scott H]

Sorry...try this.....it's short so don't blink....let me know if it works.