Broodie chickens???????

[josh]

What is a good broodie chicken?

 

[tabatha_westcott]

I would like to know myself... Why do people try to stop it? Do they get mean or something?

 

[SunAngel]

I have had 4 broodies here since getting chickens last May. One was a Red Sex Link, one was a black Silkie and then I had a bantam and standard Cochin. 3 out of the 4 hatched babies for me, but they got really violent with the other chickens in the coop, so I took the babies away as they hatched. If you don't have any fertile eggs to give them, they will sometimes sit in there for weeks and weeks, not eating or drinking much. And they also stop laying during that time. If you don't want to hatch, it seems better to break the hen of being broody as soon as possible.

ETA: Silkies seem to be the ones to go broody most often though. I had a couple of those try to go broody, but I broke them of it. I didn't have eggs for them to hatch.

 

[josh]

If you are using big chicken eggs about how many can a silkie set on at a time?

 

[SunAngel]

Well mine started out with 10 medium size eggs and she seemed to cover them just fine. So maybe 10-12 medium and 7-10 large, would be my best guess. Others have probably hatched a lot more than me and can hopefully offer more help.