Betty the Big Buff Brahma is Broody

[LittleZ]

Excuse the title, but I could not resist the alliteration. So her we are in the middle of winter with a major Nor'ester coming and my biggest brahma girl is in the midst of a broody spell. Since we're rooster-less, I was hoping that it would pass if I kept taking her out of the nest box, but after a few days of no progress I decided to bring her in the house today. So here she sits in an unheated room in an elevated wire dog crate. She managed to smush herself up to one side so she could sit on a chair holding the crate up, but I just recently moved her up onto the roost that I set in the crate and she's been there for over an hour. Hoping she breaks out of this motherly mood soon, although I am considering letting her raise a brood if this happens again once it warms up a bit more. She's actually pretty tame for a broody gal, but she gave my husky a good peck or two when he tried to give her a sniff.)))

 

[sumi]

She's pretty! I don't break my broody hens as I can't resist letting them hatch chicks, but sometimes it just isn't practical. Putting her in the cage like that should help break her broodiness within a day or 3. The reason for this is broody hens' body temperature goes up and when in a wire bottom cage, like yours, they find it hard to maintain that and after an average of 3 days they'll give up.

 

[LittleZ]

One day in the broody cage: she spent the night on the roost in there. I actually took her down this morning and moved her closer to her food. She has not eaten or drank since I put her in there, not sure if its the broodiness or dramatic change of scenery for that. She is still acting pretty broody, hope she is not gonna wait it out too long. My other girls are holed up in the coop not wanting to come out into the run during today's snow storm, who can blame them?

 

[LittleZ]

I wanted to follow up on Betty just in case anyone else finds this helpful.

Betty sat in the suspended broody cage in my spare room this winter for two whole weeks. Eating and drinking almost nothing and sitting up on a roost like a statue all puffed up and moody, no improvement whatsoever! I began to get worried about 1) her lack of nutritional intake, 2) the effect her prolonged absence might have on the flock dynamics (I only had four in the flock including Betty), and 3) her loosing any acclimation to the cold weather. So even though Betty was still acting broody I brought her back out to the coop. The first day she found her way to a nest several times so that evening I brought her back in to the cage. During second day back in the coop/pen she spent less time on the nest so I decided to leave her out with the flock moving her from the nest to a roost after lights out. By the third day I was putting away the broody pen. Phew, finally broken! It took her almost a month to start laying again, but eventually she did. I am guessing that her ginormous size might have contributed to her ability to stay broody sooo long. She must have lost a few pounds at least in the process.