Broody Hen Thread!

[jajeanpierre]

I guess if Jessica is stubborn I could buy some fertile eggs at Martin's for her. It would give her something to sit on even if they didn't hatch....tho it is possible some could. I will watch her for a couple of days. Just need a better place for it to happen.
How do you tame chicks if the mother is not tame? Will she let me handle them?

The tamest chicks I've ever had were hatched and raised by a broody. I have no idea why they are tame--I really didn't do anything to tame them other than I gave them live meal worms a few times.

 

[fisherlady]

The tamest chicks I've ever had were hatched and raised by a broody. I have no idea why they are tame--I really didn't do anything to tame them other than I gave them live meal worms a few times.

I don't believe you need to remove chicks from the broody to get tame chicks. I have found much of a birds personality is genetic and can be 'tweaked' with human interventions, but a flighty bird is a flighty bird and a calm or curious one is going to basically remain that way. Having many, many broodies with chicks to base my findings on....

What I do find is needed to improve people/chicken relations with a broody is dedicating time to it and finding a treat that they enjoy. I don't mean hours, but it does take short blocks of time a couple of times a day.

My choice of treat is a mix I make myself of a quality wild bird seed (I think it is 18 or 19% protein) with a mix of berries, nuts and seeds available at Lowes or WalMart. To a couple of cups of that seed I add a cup of finch seed, a cup of dried meal worms, a half cup of hulled sunflower seeds (available as a bird seed at Walmart also) and a cup of my normal scratch which is from a feed mill and has crushed corn, wheat and some oats. I mix my 'Sweet Treat' up in a large batch and then just fill a sandwich bag with a couple of handfuls and tuck it in a pocket before going out to the coop.

A broody has a couple of overpowering instincts... protect her chicks and find them food.... even the flightiest hen can eventually come around if you keep her in the run with the little ones, go inside and sit on the ground and scatter a bit of treat close by. If she isn't willing to come close you may need to scatter some close to where she is at then move a few feet away to sit, it won't take long before she begins to realize you have something she wants for her chicks. I have found most chicks tend to be curious and will sometimes be willing to approach you before the hen even is. Don't try to reach for the chicks or otherwise bother them, let them come to you and enjoy their treat undisturbed. Eventually you will be able to keep some treat on your hand and lay it flat on the ground and let the chicks eat from your hand, then scatter some on your leg as you sit to see which ones are brave enough to jump onto your lap to get a goodie. If you do this for a few days it will teach the chicks that humans are the source of something good. If you try to grab the little ones or hens during this process then you will loose all of the progress you made and maybe more, so patience is needed.

Another point... always use the same sound to call them while teaching them this way... a soft 'pook, pook, pook' or 'here chicky, chicky, chicky'.... something simple and rhythmic that they will begin associating with a goodie being offered will help immensely when they are older and you want to call them in, but when you call them make sure you have at least a handful of something good to scatter for them. Birds are food motivated. period. If they think it will involve food they will respond if they were trained with repetitive exposure.

Once the chicks willingly approach you on the ground then begin to call them as you approach and scatter the treat near you when standing and allow them to come the rest of the way to you. They will soon be headed your way when you walk into view just to see if you have any goodies to share.

After the chicks are willing to come around you can work on making them friendlier. They should be gently handled and offered a goodie when picked up so they view it as a positive and not a negative, keep it short and simple to get them used to it, but again, time is the key and not all chicks are destined to become 'lap chickens'.... it just isn't a common personality trait. But you will have birds who are used to being handled, will come when you call and don't freak and run the other direction when they see a human.

 

[vpatt]

Yes fisherlady all that makes sense. Sometimes I continue talking to them after all the treats are gone. None of my eleven have been lap chicks......four of them are over 1 year old. They are becoming much more used to me....most of them. I guess I like the idea of them 'liking' me back, lol.....when it is really the food they like. But I can see it would be much easier to care for them if they are more calm around me. I agree that it is just part of their personality or it is not. The newest pullet is a red sexlink and she will run up and ' talk' to me if something is wrong. Wrong has consisted of her being pushed away from the food or once I was getting ready to lock the coop for the night and didn't realize she was still out scratching.......until she ran up and told me.
:cd

 

[fisherlady]

Maybe just the fact that you were near by. I am sure some places the chicks only see us from afar.

This is very true, animals fear the 'unknown'.... it is a survival instinct. If you just spend time sitting close by and preferably on their level they will get used to you much quicker.
During cold weather I have found the chicks quickly figure out that my leg/lap or arm makes a much warmer and more comfy spot to sit and rest than the cold ground. After they get a treat or two they line up along my leg and settle in. They will stay there as long as I will sit and let them.... It has nothing to do with affection, they just like having a warm roost to sit on!

 

[jajeanpierre]

I don't believe you need to remove chicks from the broody to get tame chicks. I have found much of a birds personality is genetic and can be 'tweaked' with human interventions, but a flighty bird is a flighty bird and a calm or curious one is going to basically remain that way. Having many, many broodies with chicks to base my findings on....

What I do find is needed to improve people/chicken relations with a broody is dedicating time to it and finding a treat that they enjoy. I don't mean hours, but it does take short blocks of time a couple of times a day.

My choice of treat is a mix I make myself of a quality wild bird seed (I think it is 18 or 19% protein) with a mix of berries, nuts and seeds available at Lowes or WalMart. To a couple of cups of that seed I add a cup of finch seed, a cup of dried meal worms, a half cup of hulled sunflower seeds (available as a bird seed at Walmart also) and a cup of my normal scratch which is from a feed mill and has crushed corn, wheat and some oats. I mix my 'Sweet Treat' up in a large batch and then just fill a sandwich bag with a couple of handfuls and tuck it in a pocket before going out to the coop.

A broody has a couple of overpowering instincts... protect her chicks and find them food.... even the flightiest hen can eventually come around if you keep her in the run with the little ones, go inside and sit on the ground and scatter a bit of treat close by. If she isn't willing to come close you may need to scatter some close to where she is at then move a few feet away to sit, it won't take long before she begins to realize you have something she wants for her chicks. I have found most chicks tend to be curious and will sometimes be willing to approach you before the hen even is. Don't try to reach for the chicks or otherwise bother them, let them come to you and enjoy their treat undisturbed. Eventually you will be able to keep some treat on your hand and lay it flat on the ground and let the chicks eat from your hand, then scatter some on your leg as you sit to see which ones are brave enough to jump onto your lap to get a goodie. If you do this for a few days it will teach the chicks that humans are the source of something good. If you try to grab the little ones or hens during this process then you will loose all of the progress you made and maybe more, so patience is needed.

Another point... always use the same sound to call them while teaching them this way... a soft 'pook, pook, pook' or 'here chicky, chicky, chicky'.... something simple and rhythmic that they will begin associating with a goodie being offered will help immensely when they are older and you want to call them in, but when you call them make sure you have at least a handful of something good to scatter for them. Birds are food motivated. period. If they think it will involve food they will respond if they were trained with repetitive exposure.

Once the chicks willingly approach you on the ground then begin to call them as you approach and scatter the treat near you when standing and allow them to come the rest of the way to you. They will soon be headed your way when you walk into view just to see if you have any goodies to share.

After the chicks are willing to come around you can work on making them friendlier. They should be gently handled and offered a goodie when picked up so they view it as a positive and not a negative, keep it short and simple to get them used to it, but again, time is the key and not all chicks are destined to become 'lap chickens'.... it just isn't a common personality trait. But you will have birds who are used to being handled, will come when you call and don't freak and run the other direction when they see a human.

Great advice!

Being captured causes the greatest fear response you can get in a prey animal. Every time you grab a bird and frighten them, they practice being afraid of you.

One thing that I've never seen discussed on any chicken discussion group is that a chick being raised by a hen is natural so they learn normal chicken behaviors from their mother at the right time.

I've had parrots for well over a decade, and in the past it was normal/common for parrot chicks to be incubator hatched and hand reared. It was felt they made better pets since they bonded with their human "parent". Nothing could be further from the truth. Hand raising baby parrots created neurotic and often severely mentally ill parrots by the time they reached maturity. Wild-caught parrots rarely were as mentally unbalanced as many of the hand-raised birds. The trend now is to allow the parents to raise their babies for 6 weeks or so before the breeder pulls them from the nest and starts hand feeding and taming.

 

[jajeanpierre]

This is very true, animals fear the 'unknown'.... it is a survival instinct. If you just spend time sitting close by and preferably on their level they will get used to you much quicker.
During cold weather I have found the chicks quickly figure out that my leg/lap or arm makes a much warmer and more comfy spot to sit and rest than the cold ground. After they get a treat or two they line up along my leg and settle in. They will stay there as long as I will sit and let them.... It has nothing to do with affection, they just like having a warm roost to sit on!

I think the most important thing you can do is to not appear as a predator. You also need to allow them a choice, to be able to choose not to allow you close.

 

[jajeanpierre]

I don't know if I've shared this with the Broody group before (I know I mentioned it on the Silkie group), but did you know that when DDT had decimated the Peregrine falcon populations and they were on the brink of extinction, Silkies and Cochins were used to hatch out the falcon chicks? Falcon chicks were removed from the nest before hatch or just at hatch so they could become falcons instead of learning to be meat-eating chickens. Falcons are still hatched under broodies on occasion. (I learned this from a friend of mine, an avian vet, who is an expert in falcons running a breeding operation for Gyr falcons in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. I find it amazing he can breed Arctic-breeding falcons in the Unite Arab Emirates.)

 

[Tnate]

...

I have some Silkies that always seem to be in some state of broodiness.  I check nest boxes several times a day, and I pick up any I think might be thinking of being broody and put them outside near the food and water.  I don't really try to break them since they never seem to lose condition, but in the heat I am particularly careful that they get out for water several times a day.  Sometimes they continue to lay eggs, sometimes not.  I don't really care about their egg production--they are just my cute little backyard chickens.  I tried taking a committed Ameraucana hen off the nest many times a day for months and finally gave up, giving her seven eggs to hatch.  I worried about her condition since she had been broody for a couple of months before I gave her eggs, so I offered water and hand fed her in the nest.

If you want her to lay eggs for you, just take her off the nest several times a day.  Try putting her far away from the nest so she gets distracted.  Thanks! Today she is comes out and coming out with the other girls. ..so she is eating and drink normally. I guess I will just kick her out of the nest box each time I let go out to them. Her broody attitude is not nice with the othe4s for sure...again...thanks everyone!

 

[TeaChick]

By the way, Ken says he won't mind the extra noise and the neighbors can go to, well, someplace warmer than here. If this little guy is a rooster he still STAYS!

Hooray for Scout!!!
For what it's worth, that doesn't look like a cockerel to me, but some breeds you can't tell that young by the comb.
Anyway, may I suggest yolk water to help give him a boost. =)

 

[TeaChick]

Before she stopped laying almost 7 weeks ago we got a egg a day. Never fail! Is it because she was going broody and I pulled her clutch ? She's 8 months old. Any thoughts? She had 8 eggs 2 golf balls and just couldn't make up her mind if she wanted to be a mom. So after almost two weeks I pulled her clutch cause it was hot and I didn't want rotting eggs.

How long between her last egg and now?
It sounds like you might have broken her broody mood on the late side and that could be why she's not laying right now, depending on how long it's been.
I've only had one broody, and she didn't raise a clutch b/c she lost all the eggs. She stopped laying after she started sitting, and she started back to laying a couple of weeks after she got up off the golf balls.