Broody Hen Thread!

[fisherlady]

Most of my roosters couldn't care less about humans or upheavals, but one of them seems very sensitive to humans and any other bird in distress for even minor stuff. He is always the first to make friends with new flock members, the broodies love him because he takes care of the Littles and the teens hang out with him frequently. He isn't the head rooster but he is priceless to me and I'll be heartbroken when he passes. It is the same with roosters as it is with the hens, many variations in the personalities.

 

[earlybirdy5]

Thank you @PD-Riverman and @Lady of McCamley I really appreciate the tips. We are going to take your suggestions, move her and start with new eggs.

 

[Sydney Acres]

Also, I keep hearing it repeated that hens can brood themselves to death as if this is a natural occurrence and something that we poultry managers need to regularly protect our brooding hens from. However, It has been my experience that a healthy hen does not starve herself to death while brooding. Hens are designed to brood and withstand brooding. Unless a hen has developed a worm overload, external parasites, or has very poor food/water support during the brood, (all things to manage and maintain during the brood), she will not succumb to the ills of brooding in and of itself.


I do ponder the stamina of commercial layer breeds, such as RIRs, and hybrids for brooding. Broodiness has been genetically selected out of them, but occasionally you'll get one who does have enough hormone imprint left that she will undertake a brood, often half-heartedly. Typically they will play at brooding, sulking, rather than really committing to a good brood. However, doing so may lower their immune system enough that something latent kicks in.

I have had a couple of sulky brooders in my large fowl commercial breeds, but they snapped out of it to return to full health with a little encouragement. However, I had one lingering sulky/broody girl waste away and eventually die, even after encouragement and support. After viewing a multitude of healthy broods, and several unhealthy broods, I have come to the conclusion that this gal brooded and died from poor health rather than true broodiness.

I suspicion what is mistaken for a normal brood is sometimes actually an unhealthy brood brought on by un-natural hormonal imbalance and/or underlying disease.

Curiously, I know that in commercial breeds, ovarian tumors are very common in laying hens by the age of 2 years (which is why the industry culls at 2 years of age). One article states: "These tumors [in poultry] are so prevalent that scientists studying human ovarian cancer use chickens in their research. A study in 2005 of 676 four-year old laying hens determined that 45% had tumors! 18% of those were adenocarcinomas." (cited below)

Which causes me to ponder even further that there may be a link between these common ovarian tumors and an unhealthy, wasting brood.

I suspicion ovarian cancer was a possible culprit in that one hen. While she appeared to be truly broody at the beginning, she was especially sulky, lethargic in her brood, then weakened and wasted. No manner of encouragement or care helped. Once you see it, this wasting brood is not like a normal brood but something truly more sinister. I therefore wonder if the ovarian tumor causes a trigger of hormones which sets them into an unhealthy brood, then they slowly succumb to weakness and eventually death as their stressed immune system cannot fight off the growing, cancerous tumors.....just totally guessing as I did not do a necropsy on the hen, but I highly suspicion tumors present as her abdomen was more distended, typical of the tumors created by ovarian cancer. (Something I noticed but did not understand at the time.)

Other underlying illnesses, like slow growth Mareks, can be triggered by stress, such as brooding, and cause a slow wasting and weakness as well.

So while I am sympathetic to those who feel their hens need to be closely monitored for brooding behaviors, with significant daily intervention, and I know brooding is definitely a marathon sat by the hen and needs good support like any athlete should receive, I remain skeptical that poor health/starvation/wasting is the nature of normal brooding in itself.

Just thoughts...perhaps ramblings....in response to my continued observation that a healthy hen will brood and come out fine without a lot of human intervention but only reasonable support and maintenance.

Have any of you other experienced broody keepers noticed anything of the same kind?

@fisherlady @nchls school @vpatt @Sydney Acres

@varidgerunner I know you've contemplated the same thoughts with your more wild type games having more of the natural instinct and stamina to brood

LofMc
Sources:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759668/
2. http://hencam.com/henblog/2011/02/why-old-hens-die/
3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474556/

Hello Lady of McCamley and others,
I have been away for so long, it was a surprise to see my name tagged to this thread. I do so miss it, but had/have so much going on that something had to give.

Yes, I totally agree that brooding is a natural event that a normal, healthy hen should be able to endure without significant interference by her keepers, and that if she is wasting away from her brood that something is wrong. However, it is important to remember that the caveat here is a "normal, healthy hen." What exactly does that mean when it comes to brooding specifically, vs how we use those terms relating to other aspects of the hen?

Most of us have a loosely defined understanding of what a "normal, healthy hen" is. She eats well enough to maintain proper body condition, she drinks well enough to maintain hydration, and she vigorously engages in normal activities, keeping up with the flock. She is not loaded with parasites, she looks great visually, and has good weight and tone when picked up. She lays an appropriate number of eggs for her breed and age, breeds with the rooster regularly if they are kept together, and she lives an appropriate life span for her breed. She rarely or never seems listless, puffed up, unwilling to eat when fed, or isolates herself from the flock except when egg laying. Sounds like a healthy hen, right?

Notice that I said nothing about brooding! If this were a wild hen and she didn't brood, or didn't brood properly, that would be the end of her genetic line, and her contribution to the species would be "selected out." The hens that brood properly would likewise be "selected in," and the species would continue in that fashion, with proper brooding behavior, and all the necessary hormonal triggers that must physiologically be so perfectly coordinated, would be present in essentially all hens, because without that whole process working properly those genetics don't get passed on to future generations.

So what happens in our modern poultry? Only a small percentage of people use broody hens for incubation. All hatcheries, almost all large private breeders, and the vast majority of small farms use incubators and artificial brooding to raise babies. I would suspect that less than 1%, probably significantly less than 1%, of all chicks/poults/ducklings/goslings/etc are raised via natural brooding outside of developing countries. So how does that affect brooding behavior? First, natural brooding is "deselected" by hatcheries and large private breeders, as brooding takes time away from laying, so hens that brood lay less eggs per year, and who wants that when you're trying to hatch out as many chicks as possible. And let's face it, brooding behavior is disruptive in large facilities that need to run efficiently, so no one wants a broody causing trouble, or being picked on by other birds and needing extra care. So some places cull a hen at the first sign of broodiness, and others just cull breeding pens that have poor production numbers, which effectively reduces or eliminates brooding from the gene pool. Second, as if active deselection weren't enough, there is lack of active selection. In nature, proper brooding behavior, from start to finish, is essential and immediately selected for. That's one of the things that keeps brooding such an effective means of reproduction -- only the ones that do it exactly right get to pass on their genetics.

So now we have a situation where the vast majority of poultry aren't naturally brooded, and the majority of breeds either rarely or never brood as one of their modern breed characteristics. What about the lines that do still brood? Shouldn't they do it right, and never "brood themselves to death?"

Why would that be the case?? Brooding is a complex set of behaviors, triggered and controlled by a very coordinated combination of physiological adjustments, hormonal surges, and environmental conditions. When there's no selection pressure for the process, doesn't it make sense that there would be mistakes in the process? In the wild hen, mistakes are immediately corrected, because the line dies out. But in the modern hen, the bird with brooding mistakes coded in her genetics will still produce as many chicks as the bird with no mistakes, thanks to artificial incubation and brooding.

I know of 2 hens that brooded themselves to death, owned by two different FB friends that didn't realize there was a problem until it was too late. Essentially, they were on the nest for 3-4 months straight, the eggs were ceramic so they never hatched or rotted, and the hens just never came out of their brood. Their brood was normal in every other way, but they starved to death after eating so little for so long. I know of one turkey hen that had to be put down because she was provided food and water in her nest, so she didn't have to get up daily to eat. Without daily exercise and stretching, her muscles contracted, and she lost the ability to walk. Months of physical therapy and consults with some of the best avian specialists in the country could not correct the problem, and her distraught owner eventually euthanized her beloved pet. I know of two hens that died of pneumonia while on the nest, owned by two different keepers. On necropsy the poultry pathologist had the opinion that they brooded in an excessively deep trance, and didn't come off the nest often enough, so their lungs didn't get the necessary intermittent deep breath required to keep their lungs fully expanded. As a consequence, the lungs stopped expelling the normal respiratory mucous, accumulations of normal respiratory secretions started to pool in microscopic areas, then wider areas, and eventually infection set in. I personally have had two different hens, both poor quality hatchery Barnevelders from the same source, that would have brooded themselves to death if I had not intervened. They wouldn't come out of their trance on their own. They could be picked up and set down anywhere, and would still be there hours later. Other chickens could pick at them and they still wouldn't wake up. They didn't come off the nest on their own, at all, because their trance was unbroken. I could pet them, ruffle their feathers, roll them upside down for 20 minutes, flap their wings, move their legs around, anything, and they didn't wake up. They were incredibly easy to tube feed!! One day I set one on a counter in the barn to go get something, got distracted and forgot about her. I remembered her 10 hours later and she was still there, on the hard counter, hadn't moved an inch. One day I discovered that rubbing ice cubes on her cheek brought her out of her trance for about 10 minutes. She frantically ate, drank, and stiffly dust bathed, but then slipped back into her brood. After 10 weeks on one and 18 weeks on the other, I was finaly able to figure out a reliable way to break their broods, and I now start the brood-breaking process on these two girls the moment they start clucking. They are now 6 years old, still lay appropriately for their age and breed, and appear to be vigorous and healthy in every other way, but their brood is just not properly regulated once it starts.

So if everything works the way it should, any healthy hen should be able to endure a brood without major intervention by her keeper -- just provide adequate food, water, safety from predators, and ideally a calm, private, comfortable and dimly lit area to brood in. That's if everything goes according to plan. But we're not working with birds that have been subjected to natural reproductive pressures, so we shouldn't expect the same results from our modern poultry that we do from their wild counterparts. Few people would say that it is a natural process for a woman to have a baby, so there is no reason for prenatal checkups, or delivery attendants, or the ability to get to the hospital immediately if a home birth is chosen but starts to go wrong. While it is true that giving birth is a natural process and everything should go smoothly without interference or assistance, we all know that that is not always the case, and lots of women and babies still die in childbirth. Therefore, we monitor, we take precautions, and we do things that will hopefully lower our risk of disaster, because we're realistic enough to know that there are genuine risks, and don't want those possible complications to happen to us.

I only allow certain hens to brood my chicks. My selected broodies have a specific temperament -- calm, patient, intelligent, gentle, and extremely tame Red Dorkings. I don't want anxious, flighty, crazy, dingbats raising my chicks. As such, all the hens that I use as broodies are pets, and I don't want to subject them to any risks that I can minimize, as each hen is more important to me than any chick that she might hatch out. Every day I pick her up off the nest and take her to a private area in the barn. I wake her out of her brood, make sure she eats and drinks, coax her to fly up on a counter at least 3 times to get good wing flaps (to fully expand her lungs as she takes really deep breaths while flapping), offer her an area to dustbathe, and offer attention and social interaction, which they all seem to crave as soon as the trance is broken. It all that necessary? No. Is it something that should be done for every hen? Absolutely not. Most hens aren't as tame, and would panic if they were pulled off their nest by someone that doesn't handle them every day, and possibly cause them to abandon the nest. Does it reduce risks of complications? Definitely. Not only does it help prevent muscle stiffness and pneumonia, but it allows me to monitor each hen every day as to weight loss, vigor, and overall general condition. If something is going wrong, I am more likely to catch it early, which means that I am more likely to successfully resolve it. But that's just me, with my specific hens. I don't recommend it for all keepers, or all hens, as brooding care is definitely not a one-size-fits-all situation, IMO.

Regarding the common reproductive cancers in hens, they do not typically originate from or affect the ovary. Yes, they are a model for human ovarian cancer, but only because of the similarities in metastatic behavior and response to treatment, not because of the organ affected. Both the metastatic adenocarcinomas and the benign adenomas typically originate from the oviduct in poultry, not the ovary. They do respond to hormonal therapy, but do not typically cause the ovary to produce hormones that induce brooding. Most birds with oviductal adenocarcinoma continue to ovulate normally, but when the oviduct has too many tumors it cannot function properly, so the eggs are not normal. Along with many other things, it is a common cause of soft shelled eggs, shell-less eggs, "regurgitated" huge eggs, eggs within an egg, and all sorts of other egg abnormalities. I have had 2 birds die from it. One was caught early, and lived another 6 very happy months with treatment. The avian specialist was good friends with an MD who specialized gynecological cancer, so the MD became quite involved in her case. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about ovarian cancer in humans, and it scared the heck out of me. The second hen (a Spanish Black turkey) showed not a single sign of listlessness, decreased appetite, or discomfort until 10 days before she died, and by that time more than 1/4 of her body weight was cancer. It is just amazing how stoic some birds are, and how strong the instinct is to not show signs of illness. On necropsy, her ovary was totally normal, with yolks at various levels of maturity, in line to be ovulated. Neither of these birds displayed any brooding behavior the year that they died, and all prior brooding behavior had been normal. However, another common problem in poultry, a cystic ovary, could easily cause bizarre hormonal shifts, potentially leading to abnormal brooding behavior, although I have never seen a case documented.

Factory farmed layers are cycled out every 1-2 years not because of cancer, but because egg production drops too low. These are not heritage birds that lay 180-250 eggs per year, but remain productive for 5-7 years. These are highly modified layer hybrids, which lay 320-350 eggs per year for 1-2 years (depending on the genetic line), then drop down to less than 50-100 per year. At that level, the birds aren't profitable any more, and are culled. The fact that so many have tumors is just an incidental finding as far as the farmers are concerned, and played no part in their all-in, all-out replacement cycle..

 

[JayJo]

I put some fertile eggs under my broody a week ago and things seem to be progressing nicely. I didn't move her, as folks on this thread had suggested, because I was under a time constraint for the hatch and didn't feel like I had time. I'm regretting that now and will definitely move a broody if I do this again. Anyway, too late now. I put up some nesting box curtains and that seems to be cutting down on the fighting a bit. I'll move her once the babies hatch.

 

[PD-Riverman]

Thank you @PD-Riverman and @Lady of McCamley I really appreciate the tips. We are going to take your suggestions, move her and start with new eggs.

When you are thinking of moving her-----sometimes the way you do it will cause her to get real up-set. If you need some advise---just ask before you start. Hopefully she is a simple move.

 

[PD-Riverman]

I put some fertile eggs under my broody a week ago and things seem to be progressing nicely. I didn't move her, as folks on this thread had suggested, because I was under a time constraint for the hatch and didn't feel like I had time. I'm regretting that now and will definitely move a broody if I do this again. Anyway, too late now. I put up some nesting box curtains and that seems to be cutting down on the fighting a bit. I'll move her once the babies hatch.

Move them broodies-----I always preach---Doing that works so good for me. Why do you feel its to late to move her? I have moved them any where from the beginning up to day 18 without a problem. Sure I feel you will have to have everything setup before you attempt the move under the cover of darkness. If you want to try and if you need some advise---just ask, but give us details on how she is set-up and the set-up you plan to move her to.

 

[JayJo]

Move them broodies-----I always preach---Doing that works so good for me. Why do you feel its to late to move her? I have moved them any where from the beginning up to day 18 without a problem. Sure I feel you will have to have everything setup before you attempt the move under the cover of darkness. If you want to try and if you need some advise---just ask, but give us details on how she is set-up and the set-up you plan to move her to.

I'm sure it's your posts I've seen... really? You think it's not too late to move her? I gave her eggs a week ago.

Here's a photo of the spot I have set up for her to bring her chicks to. It's on the ground of the enclosed run, under the raised coop. I have a feeder and waterer that are currently in the coop with her, that I can add. Open to feedback on this space. I tried to put her in there during the day today but it was terrible timing - she was already stressed from fighting for nesting box space with another chicken, and she wasn't having it. Maybe it would go better at night?

She's currently sitting in one of the two nesting boxes. I have 5 chickens including her. The nesting boxes are right above where the kennel is in the photo. All of this is within the coop/run enclosure.

Any advice you can give me would be most welcome. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks!


.

 

[PD-Riverman]

I'm sure it's your posts I've seen... really? You think it's not too late to move her? I gave her eggs a week ago.

Here's a photo of the spot I have set up for her to bring her chicks to. It's on the ground of the enclosed run, under the raised coop. I have a feeder and waterer that are currently in the coop with her, that I can add. Open to feedback on this space. I tried to put her in there during the day today but it was terrible timing - she was already stressed from fighting for nesting box space with another chicken, and she wasn't having it. Maybe it would go better at night?

She's currently sitting in one of the two nesting boxes. I have 5 chickens including her. The nesting boxes are right above where the kennel is in the photo. All of this is within the coop/run enclosure.

Any advice you can give me would be most welcome. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks!


.

Will she and the chicks stay in this cage with other chickens around the outside of the cage??? If so you have got to wrap the sides of the kennel with 1/2" hardware cloth so the chicks stay in it with her. Chicks will roam and will walk right through those sides---Mother hen can not protect them if they are out there and she is in the cage. If you move her properly---no its not to late. If she is in a location where it is some what dark----you will need to place something dark on the sides/back of this cage so she is setting is in a similar looking spot.

For best results You need her in a movable nest that will fit in the new location so you can pick up the nest with her setting in it---at night and move her to a ready place without a light---if there is enough light for her to see whats going on----she will get upset. You need to gently set her/nest in the new location and back away. You can monitor her from a distance for a little while also at day break the next morning to see if she is going to accept or go crazy---if she goes crazy---just move her back where she was. I have mover 150+/- and everyone accepted the move, but I use No light and if its to dark without a light---I flash a small light on for no more than a second to get my bearings---doing that only when I really need it. Food and water is placed in the new nest before dark. I have had them to get off the nest the next morning---eat etc and get back on the eggs---with no problems. Some move them with a light, then get food and water for them after they are in the new location--again using the light-------this rarely ever works. Good Luck.

 

[cmbookworm]

Well, we have one chick from our girl who was sitting on 3 eggs. Day 21 will come for the others tomorrow. I went to check on her before we locked everyone up and was checking the eggs and I had a baby looking back! So excited!

We have a pet carrier set up for her now and it's set against the nesting box so she can move babies inside and food and water is inside. My question is, how long do we confine them to this temporary space before allowing access to the larger coop? We will have to hardware cloth around the run so no one slips out.

 

[JayJo]

Will she and the chicks stay in this cage with other chickens around the outside of the cage??? If so you have got to wrap the sides of the kennel with 1/2" hardware cloth so the chicks stay in it with her. Chicks will roam and will walk right through those sides---Mother hen can not protect them if they are out there and she is in the cage. If you move her properly---no its not to late. If she is in a location where it is some what dark----you will need to place something dark on the sides/back of this cage so she is setting is in a similar looking spot.

For best results You need her in a movable nest that will fit in the new location so you can pick up the nest with her setting in it---at night and move her to a ready place without a light---if there is enough light for her to see whats going on----she will get upset. You need to gently set her/nest in the new location and back away. You can monitor her from a distance for a little while also at day break the next morning to see if she is going to accept or go crazy---if she goes crazy---just move her back where she was. I have mover 150+/- and everyone accepted the move, but I use No light and if its to dark without a light---I flash a small light on for no more than a second to get my bearings---doing that only when I really need it. Food and water is placed in the new nest before dark. I have had them to get off the nest the next morning---eat etc and get back on the eggs---with no problems. Some move them with a light, then get food and water for them after they are in the new location--again using the light-------this rarely ever works. Good Luck.

OK, thanks for the advice. I'll wrap the kennel with hardware cloth and try to get the plastic tub under her tomorrow, and then tomorrow night in the dark I'll try transferring her. I'll let her know how it goes! Thanks for the advice!