Broody Buff?

[TenTanToes]

I'm still pretty new to chickens but my family adores our 2 Buff Orpingtons and 1 RIR mutt, and we love the 2-3 eggs per day. We were gone for 3 days last week and when I got home Saturday night, one of the Buffs was laying on the stash of eggs. I've been searching the forums and believe she is just broody. She isn't acting mean like some of the stories I read, but she does want to sit in the nest as much as possible. I sometimes allow the hens out of the coop to free range in our backyard, and when I put her out yesterday and locked the hen house she seemed more than happy to roam with the other two. I was concerned that she might keep the other two out of the nesting box so this morning I put her out of the coop but left the other two in so they could do their business. My main question at this point is, do I need to try to get her out of her broodiness, or does this just pass on its own?

 

[Southernbelle]

She doesn't sound really hard-core broody, yet or she wouldn't have been happy roaming around outside with the other hens, she would've been fighting to get back to her nest. If you don't want to let her hatch babies, it might pass on it's own, but it's kindest to break her of being broody. Keep taking her off the nest and making her go outside with the others. If she insists on sitting on the nest, remove all the eggs (including fake ones) and give her ice cubes to sit on. If that doesn't work, isolating her in an all-wire cage usually works.

 

[TenTanToes]

Thanks so much for the advice! From everything I've read I was thinking she wasn't hard core about it either, but didn't want it to get to that point. We don't have any plans to hatch any eggs, so I was hoping I might be able to break her of it. I figured that us being gone for several days and allowing the eggs to accumulate caused her to start, so next time we are away for a couple days I will have a neighbor collect the eggs for us.