broody hen

[portlandpeeps]

My 1-1/2 year old EE has become broody. She sits in one of the nest boxes all day, but has not laid an egg for at least a week now. When I open the door, she squawks and gets her feathers all ruffled. When she finally decides to come out in late afternoon, she's very grumpy and squawks at everyone. How long will this stage last? Is there anything I can do to get her laying again?

 

[CleverYou]

have you thought about makeing the best of it and finding some eggs for to hatch? do you have other chickens?
iv herd of taking them and running around the yard a few times for a few days sometimes will bring them out of it or taking them on a bike ride under your arm...i read it in another section.....

 

[portlandpeeps]

Quote:
thanks for the ideas. tomorrow i'll give her an egg from one of our other chickens. she does seem miserable though. tonight i was staining the coop and she flew out while i had the nest box door open. she looks bigger than normal. can there be other reasons why she's stopped laying? i'm going to do a search for this. i heard it's hormonal.

 

[Nugget]

The last time my australorp went broody it seemed like it was more than a month before she started laying again. She is broody again now. There was a forest fire and we were evacuated this weekend -and of course we couldn't leave the animals. We packed up the car with chickens, dogs and our ferret and spent the night at my in-law's place. The chickens were in small cages in their garage. We were allowed home again late the next day. I figured if anything was going to break her broody behaviour, that would... but no! She's back in her egg trance sitting in her nest box.... Pretty determined chicken

 

[portlandpeeps]

Quote:
where do you live? it must be unsettling for you to have to leave your home. does it happen frequently?

 

[Nugget]

Hi Portland, I`m in Nova Scotia. There were a few wildfires this weekend due to the winds. The worst was in another city, but 25 homes in my neighbourhood were evacuated for about 20 hours. It was a hard night to sleep but in my area no homes were damaged Glad to be back!! There are sporadic fires around the Halifax area every few years or so... not a common thing but this weekend there were at least 6 in the province.

 

[portlandpeeps]

Nugget, I just checked out your page--love your coop. Very cute!

How did you end up with so many roos?

We live in the city and have 4 hens. We had 2 roos out of 4 when we first bought 2 day old chicks. This time around I bought pullets, but I'm realizing it's much more fun to have chickens who run to you instead of away from you when you come outside.

 

[Nugget]

Thanks! We had great fun making it. As far as the chicks go, we found a breeder of the types we wanted but he only sold `straight run`. Of our first 10 day old chicks we had 8 roosters. We got a little suspicious the breeder was using us as a rooster dump. We then asked for eggs to hatch (knowing he couldn`t sex the eggs!). He kind of resisted, then offered some day olds (that he picked out for us) at a discounted price saying he was sorry for our `bad luck`. These chicks ended up all being female! I am sure more was going on than you could ever prove! I hope we can find takers for the boys soon...