Broody hen

[Bobandoris]

I have 3 chickens in a 4 nest coop but they all want to use the same nest to lay, one of them wont leave the nest so none of them are laying. I dont want to introduce fertile eggs to the nest so what do I do with her?

 

[alaskanchickens]

We have 12 boxes in ours and our 13 hens only use 4. I had a Buff Orpington do that, she wasn't really going broody, almost seemed like she would just sit in the one to keep the others out. I removed her and blocked that particular nest box off with cardboard. I also did it with a few others because they just weren't needed. But she got over her "broodiness" and lays her eggs and gets out now.

 

[alyxl02]

Hi,
I have the same problem... How I've found it I'm sorry is the only way to get the broody hen out of the way of the other chooks is give her even one or two fertile eggs and put her with the eggs in her own nesting box.

I brought 6 fertile eggs for my hen but after a week you candle them to see if there still viable and 5 out of 6 were. After a day of having 5 eggs she broke one by accident so be careful of that.

If you would like to get fertile eggs another good idea is look up on google images chick embryo development and there's one real life chart of the development from day 1 - 20.

Hope this helps,

Alyxl02

 

[alaskanchickens]

There are also threads on here about how to break a broody hen if you don't want her laying on eggs at this time. Good luck!