Broody banty

[ndngirl]

Help!

My poor cochin banty pullet has gone broody. I'm not sure what to do for her. She hasn't laid in 5 days (she's usually one of the first to lay each day), refuses to free range with the other girls, and "steals" everybody elses eggs to sit on. She trills like a tribble when we remove the eggs from under her, which we do as soon as we notice one of the girls go up and come down from the nest box. She looks and sounds pitiful.

Has anyone else had this experience? I feel terrible for her. She's just sitting up in the nest looking like she should be knitting booties!

 

[robin416]

"Trills like a tribble" LOL Consider yourself lucky, many will try taking your hand off. You can just let her be. If eggs aren't going to hatch she will eventually figure it out. Just watch to see if she is getting off the nest at some point for food and water.

She will lose a great deal of weight during the nest sitting time. I actually put a small cup of food in the nest to encourage them to eat a bit more and they usually do.

 

[M.J]

a way to break them out of a brood is to put ice cubes under her and i that does not work they say to remove a hen from the nest put her in a wire bottom cage raised up so that air touches her bottom until broody behavior is not present.

 

[silkiechicken]

And even then, after you try every recipie in the book to break her..some just go on for months... my current broody has been sitting for 5 weeks... refuses to budge. She's shorting me out on eggs too!!! I want her eggs to sell!!

 

[eggzettera]

New to this so no advice. But WELCOME to BYC - you are going to become a fellow addict.......Resistance is futile, you will become part of the collective.......

 

[jab91864]

I've got a young banty favorelle that has gone broody. I was surprised because she's only been laying about a month.

I took her eggs daily and now she is trying to hatch 4 golf balls. I've pegged her as Sybil since she goes on attack the minute she thinks you are going to come within a foot of her nest !!! I take the golf balls and split them back up into the other nests as they originally were but she manages to get them back into her box... how I'm not really sure since there is a good size ledge she has to toss the ball over...lol.

I worry if I spend too much effort trying to stop her now then she won't want to set for me in the spring when I will probably want her to.... if that makes sense.

Julie

 

[ndngirl]

Thanks everybody!

Today we've locked her out of the coop for a bit, hopefully she'll forage and become distracted. I will definitely keep taking the eggs away (too delicious to leave out there!), and hopefully won't have to resort to further measures, but if so you've all given me lots of options. But it's nice to know it's not fatal! She's the most gentle little thing, sweet as can be.

It's great to be here. This is the only place I know of where people don't say, "YOU HAVE WHAT?!" when I talk about the girls!