Broody hens issue - or is it?

[Kakaruk]

Hello friends,

I've had four broody hens this spring, first year hens. One I helped by locking in the smaller coop and she stopped after a couple days. Then, two more started brooding, then another, like it's spreading among the girls. I take them out often and lock in the smaller coop but I let them out after half a day or so because I don't have another food/water source in there. They just keep going back to brooding. I take all eggs away, production is down, but it's even past 21 days and they're still doing it. I read the article with the dog pen, I can't do that, I've got three now. Anyway, do I just keep taking eggs away and put up with the lower production, just deal with it? When will they stop?

 

[rosemarythyme]

They should stop when they've set long enough to realize that the "eggs" haven't hatched. However some hens may continue sitting well past that point.

Out of curiosity why can't you do a crate or other confinement area? If you do it immediately you can generally break them in 2-3 days, and if the confinement area is large enough you can put more than 1 bird in provided they get along with all the hormones going. The longer you wait the harder it is to break them, and yes some folks do think broodiness is "contagious" perhaps due to the sound and behavior of the broodies.

 

[Kakaruk]

They should stop when they've set long enough to realize that the "eggs" haven't hatched. However some hens may continue sitting well past that point.

Out of curiosity why can't you do a crate or other confinement area? If you do it immediately you can generally break them in 2-3 days, and if the confinement area is large enough you can put more than 1 bird in provided they get along with all the hormones going. The longer you wait the harder it is to break them, and yes some folks do think broodiness is "contagious" perhaps due to the sound and behavior of the broodies.

Well, as I shared, I don't have another food/water source in my little coop. I guess I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and set it up that way.

 

[Ridgerunner]

When will they stop?

Each hen is an individual so I can't tell you when any one specific hen will stop. But in general, before they even start to lay, a pullet or hen stores up additional fat in the pelvic region. This fat is put there so they can mostly live off of it when broody instead of needing to be off of the nest looking for food and water. When that fat is used up they generally break from being broody.

Different things can break a broody but Mother Nature set this system up so hens generally don't kill themselves by starvation if the eggs don't hatch. Each hen is an individual, it's possible a hen did not get this memo, but it worked well enough that chickens did not go extinct. And some break earlier for other reasons.

How long does that excess fat last? It varies per hen, some store more fat than others and some come of off the nest to eat and drink more than others. I've never let a hen sit until she quit so I can't give an average. Arbitrarily I use 5 weeks as a safe guess. If a hen cannot hatch eggs within 5 weeks of going broody I don't give her eggs. Some people give a broody chicken duck eggs that take five weeks to hatch and are often successful so it can obviously often last longer. Some people like to give hard and fast numbers and make rules for living animals. That doesn't always work.

A part of this is that a hen needs to store up excess fat before she starts laying. The longer they are broody the more fat they use up, so it may take them longer to resume laying as they replace that fat.

Some people notice that a broody is losing weight and see that as proof that she is starving herself to death. Not really. She is using excess fat put there for that very reason. The vast majority will break before they hurt themselves.

So why do I break a hen when one goes broody and I do not want her to hatch eggs instead of letting her go on her own schedule? Part of it is that I want to get her back to laying eggs. Part of it is that a broody hen can upset the henhouse and makes extra work for me. I don't know how important either of those are for you.