Hehe, broodiness is very contagious!
We started the spring with NO broodies, and by, I think it was May, we had only 1 broody. (Alpha, banty mix). Alpha hatched her chicks and then Little Red Hen went broody. About half way into LRH's incubation we had a R.I.R. (Tammy) go broody. But she got guinea eggs so she had a longer wait. Then Dove went broody..Then one of our black hens went broody. (She has no name yet) She did fine for the first week and half or so, but then she started messing up. She started with a dozen eggs. She lost one when I was picking her out of the box (It was my fault, I guess the egg was 'stuck' under her wing), somehow one got moved to another box for a day so I took it out, one she cracked, and another got moved to another box and it was at least a day before I found it. So until this morning she had 9 eggs, but I checked her today and I saw a nicely formed chick out of it's shell, dead, in her broody box!!! Her babies are due to hatch on the 22nd, I have yet to investigate it any further but I'm just so annoyed that she could somehow kill one of her babies so close to the hatch date. (And she had a special batch, all blue or green eggs.)
Anyway, back to broodies..Alphas mom is broody, no eggs for her yet though. We're waiting to get some Silkie eggs. And I think one of our purebred Columbian Wyandottes is broody. (First time having them go broody)
So that's a total of..6, maybe 7 broodies so far. We have a fairly large flock so we're still getting 10-14 eggs a day. I'm not concerned about our egg production, I'm just concerned about not having enough cages for all these broodies once they hatch their chicks. I may have to let some of the hens raise their chicks in with the flock.
I don't mind broodies in the spring and summer, but I won't have any hens going broody in the late fall. Too risky raising babies outside during the cold months.
