She is broody! Thats what all the fuss was. She had two eggs in her basket today and I tried to move them and she squwacked until I put them back. She is now sleeping happily on top of them. Mystery Solved!! Thanks everybody!
Either you need to "break" her - search for "broody breaker" or get her some fertile eggs to hatch ... Or let her sit on some golf balls, and get some day old chicks to "fake her" into believing she hatched them ...
All you need is a wire dog crate or rabbit hutch with a fine wire base (so as not to hurt their feet.) You put it up onto bricks or something similar so that the air can flow freely underneath and cool off her rear end!
Inside the crate should be a big tub of water that she can't knock over, and a bowl of feed. And your broody girl, of course. But no bedding or hay at all - just the wire base.
Make sure the cage is in an area where she has protection from the sun and rain. I put a tin roof over mine, and then drape an old sheet over the cage if it's really sunny, and place the cage under a big tree. If it's cold or wet where you are, you can put the cage in your garage or a shed.
She should stay in the cage for 48 hours. After that, you can 'test' her by letting her out. If she runs off and is acting chicken-y with her friends, eating and scratching etc, she is back to normal. If she runs straight back to the nest, you need to scoop her out immediately and put her back in the buster cage. Repeat this test daily until she passes!
Some girls are broken within two or three days. I have one in there now who is on Day 7, but it's stinking hot here so that doesn't help - it takes longer in hot weather.
Good luck. It is a test of the wills to break a broody, and you have to try and not cave in!
My experience went like this: After her setting for 3 days and nights in the nest, I put her in a wire dog crate with smaller wire on the bottom but no bedding, set up on a few bricks right in the coop and I would feed her some watered down crumble a couple times a day.
I let her out a couple times a day and she would go out into the run, drop a huge turd, race around running, take a vigorous dust bath then head back to the nest... at which point I put her back in the crate. Each time her outings would lengthen a bit, eating, drinking and scratching more and on the 3rd afternoon she stayed out of the nest and went to roost that evening...event over, back to normal tho she didn't lay for another week or two.
