Hi!
Please bear with me here: I have never had a broody and want to make sure my diagnosis is correct...
I found my favorite hen (a SS) sitting in the nest box at night a few days ago. I took her out, looked her over to make sure she wasn't injured (she has a bald patch on her back from when we still had a rooster and one of the little beasts, or maybe even she herself(?) had picked all the new little fluff feathers off of her and she had a little bloody spot that I treated with Rooster Booster Pick no more or something like that.) Her back was fine, nothing else obvious. This hen had the day before spent a lot of time right there with me when I was digging a planting hole next to their pen, fit as a fiddle, gorging on earthworms and grubs...
So I put her on the roost, took all the eggs out of the boxes, and I was barely done when I heard a boumpf and she had hopped off the roost and was on her way to the nest again - in the dark!
The next morning she was still there - different nest (the one she had picked initially is everyone's favorite and she is not at the top of the pecking order). I was still worried she might be sick, but she behaved differently from how I have ever seen her, she puffed out her neck feathers, lifted her tail and uhum, growled! I decided to take her up to the house and got my set up ready: a rectangular concrete mixing pan with a half xpen around it, minimal bedding, food, water, grit...
When I picked her up she puffed up again but didn't peck me (she is my tamest hen, the one who always comes up to me and stands on my feet).
I put her down in her new pen and found that she had actually managed to carry an egg all the way from the coop to the house with her! I took that away.
She eagerly went to eat and drink and then just sat for a while. Since then she has been roosting on the side of the pan all day, ever once in a while eagerly eaten some food but very little overall. She looks bright and alert and puffs up and growls at anyone coming close, especially the dog, when she was never scared of him before and will walk right over his legs when they are outside together. She makes a lot of other sounds that I have never heard before, too. When she lies down she is flat as a pancake.
Am I right to think she is broody?
After all that roosting on the edge of the pan I thought maybe she is over it last night - put her on the roost after dark, went around to the outside access to the nest boxes and collected her right back up with the eggs to take back to the house...
What do I do now? Just wait? Buy a wire cage? Wouldn't she cool off just as much roosting on the side of the pan?
P.S. I don't have a rooster right now and so I can't give her eggs to hatch and I really don't need more chickens anyway...)
Please bear with me here: I have never had a broody and want to make sure my diagnosis is correct...
I found my favorite hen (a SS) sitting in the nest box at night a few days ago. I took her out, looked her over to make sure she wasn't injured (she has a bald patch on her back from when we still had a rooster and one of the little beasts, or maybe even she herself(?) had picked all the new little fluff feathers off of her and she had a little bloody spot that I treated with Rooster Booster Pick no more or something like that.) Her back was fine, nothing else obvious. This hen had the day before spent a lot of time right there with me when I was digging a planting hole next to their pen, fit as a fiddle, gorging on earthworms and grubs...
So I put her on the roost, took all the eggs out of the boxes, and I was barely done when I heard a boumpf and she had hopped off the roost and was on her way to the nest again - in the dark!
The next morning she was still there - different nest (the one she had picked initially is everyone's favorite and she is not at the top of the pecking order). I was still worried she might be sick, but she behaved differently from how I have ever seen her, she puffed out her neck feathers, lifted her tail and uhum, growled! I decided to take her up to the house and got my set up ready: a rectangular concrete mixing pan with a half xpen around it, minimal bedding, food, water, grit...
When I picked her up she puffed up again but didn't peck me (she is my tamest hen, the one who always comes up to me and stands on my feet).
I put her down in her new pen and found that she had actually managed to carry an egg all the way from the coop to the house with her! I took that away.
She eagerly went to eat and drink and then just sat for a while. Since then she has been roosting on the side of the pan all day, ever once in a while eagerly eaten some food but very little overall. She looks bright and alert and puffs up and growls at anyone coming close, especially the dog, when she was never scared of him before and will walk right over his legs when they are outside together. She makes a lot of other sounds that I have never heard before, too. When she lies down she is flat as a pancake.
Am I right to think she is broody?
After all that roosting on the edge of the pan I thought maybe she is over it last night - put her on the roost after dark, went around to the outside access to the nest boxes and collected her right back up with the eggs to take back to the house...
What do I do now? Just wait? Buy a wire cage? Wouldn't she cool off just as much roosting on the side of the pan?
P.S. I don't have a rooster right now and so I can't give her eggs to hatch and I really don't need more chickens anyway...)
