Broody?

[nanama]

I have 4 hens and I think one of the buff orpingtons is "broody." Usually by the time I get home from work (around 3:30) I have 4 eggs. Yesterday Gypsy was still sitting in the nesting box. At 5:30 she was still there. Since these are my first chickens I was a little scared to move her around to get eggs so my husband & I did it together. Sure enough there were 3. I left her there and when I got home from church, around 8pm, she was still sitting there. I did move her a litte and found another egg but she didn't like it one but. All the other girls were on the roost but not her. I left her till the morning. She was still there so I took her off and put her in the yard. My husband just went by and he said she was sitting there again so he moved her. What should I do?

 

[Judy]

Usually the test of true broodiness is, they stay on the nest essentially 24/7 for maybe two nights. Some people let them sit and some try to break them; your choice. I've given up trying to break them but I do lift them out of the nest and prod them at least twice a day, til they eat and get a little exercise, because broodies do eat less and lose weight -- and occasionally worse. If you have a way to change their coop or nests, that may break it. We moved our flock into our spent garden recently, for a while, to get the bugs eaten, etc., and just the move broke both the broodies, even though we also moved the nest boxes with them.

Of course, the easy way is, get hold of a half dozen fertilized eggs and let them raise chicks.

BTW, they will steal eggs from others, and others will climb in on top of them and lay in the same nest. Yes, they can carry an egg.

The classic way to break a broody is put them in a dog cage propped up so air flows across their bottom, no nesting material, just food and water. It's supposed to work in a few days. I tried it once and couldn't stand it after a week -- I wound up buying some hatching eggs for that girl, or maybe some day old chicks (slip them under the mama at night.) One person on here puts them in a pen with a concrete floor and makes sure there is no nesting material in there, with success.