Broody hens in the works?

[Eric R]

I have 2 hens that are making that constant chirp/cluck like when they have chicks. They are still laying. Does this mean that they are about to go broody?

 

[featheredplanets]

Not necessarily. Hens make all sorts of (sometimes weird) noises, my hybrids used to broody cluck when they found pieces of food, they never went broody though.

 

[Silkie2005]

It might just be them saying "hey guys, I've found something interesting, come check it out" to the rest of the flock, like rooster does when he finds food and tells the hens. You will know when your hen is broody because she will sit on the nest all day and whenever you go near her she will make a screaming noise that sounds like a pterodactyl and go flat like a pancake on the nest.

 

[aart]

I have 2 hens that are making that constant chirp/cluck like when they have chicks. They are still laying. Does this mean that they are about to go broody?

It's possible.
Have you had a broody before?

These are my go-to signs of a broody:
Is she on nest most the day and all night?
When you pull her out of nest and put her on the ground, does she flatten right back out into a fluffy screeching pancake?
Does she walk around making a low cluckcluckcluckcluckcluck(ticking bomb) sound on her way back to the nest?
Are there feathers in the nest, and missing from her breast/belly?
If so, then she is probably broody and you'll have to decide how to manage it.

 

[Eric R]

Well now one of them did not come into the coop. I'm assuming she is sitting on a nest somewhere. Let's see what happens.

 

[Eric R]

Found her. Looks like she'd been planning this for a while. I guess 67 GTOs also make great laying boxes. Hahaha

 

[rosemarythyme]

Found her. Looks like she'd been planning this for a while. I guess 67 GTOs also make great laying boxes. Hahaha

I'm kinda impressed, that's a good spot. That's a LOT of eggs though, no way she can cover them all so assuming you want her to hatch you might need to trim down the number of eggs for her.

 

[aart]

I'm kinda impressed, that's a good spot. That's a LOT of eggs though, no way she can cover them all so assuming you want her to hatch you might need to trim down the number of eggs for her.

Ditto Dat...and put her someplace safer and more easily accessed so you can remove new eggs laid daily by other birds.

 

[Eric R]

Yeah. I'm ok with leaving her where she is. Just candled all the eggs to pick out the better ones. Looks like she just started sitting. None of the eggs had even started producing veins so I knew it was first day or so. 31 eggs total. She can't really even cover more than 7 so that was really ambitious of her.

 

[aart]

Looks like she just started sitting.

Are you sure she's actually 'sitting'?
Mark the 7 eggs and check at night to make sure she's there and to remove any extra eggs added. I'll bet there's more than one bird laying there.