Brooding Chicken

[Junco]

Maybe someone can suggest to me what to do. I have one hen who has been consistently laying one egg per day. All of a sudden about 2 weeks ago, she stopped and made a separate nest away from the laying boxes and has been sitting on it the majority of the day. This I am assuming is brooding. However, there is no eggs. Every morning I have to take her out of the coop and I mess up the nest. By lunch time she has the nest remade and is sitting on it. Is there anything else I can do?

 

[yyz0yyz0]

Loan her to me, I'm currently waiting till one of mine goes broody so I can hatch some eggs. Last summer it seemed I had a broody hen all the time but now that I want one I can't get one. ARGH!!!!

Enough of my wining!

What I did last summer anytime I had a broody hen was to put her in my "broody breaker" for a few days and that always seemed to cure them.

My broody breaker is a wire dog kennel/crate. I put it under my coop so it's still protected by the run. I place it up on a couple of 2x4s so there's air circulation underneath. I give her food and water and that's it. The broody hen wants to snuggle down in the nest and make a warm spot. With nothing but a wire floor with air underneath she can't make this warm spot so gives up after a few days.

it worked for me several times last summer, just scored a dog crate off Craigslist for this purpose.

 

[aart]

Yep broody breaker crate...I just finished breaking one, got a pic this time.
It sits on 4x4's and there a nipple water bottle installed after this pic was taken.



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.

 

[Jodier]

I have what I think is a brooding chicken. I've tried to get her out of the nest but when she joins the other chickens one of them, my most dominant, attacked her. Is that normal? Or, could there be another problem -- not booding.