Do pullets set on eggs only occasionally?

[speckledhen]

Silkies, Cochins and Orpingtons, but you'll do better in the broody dept with Orps if you get them from a real breeder, I think. I've had blue, black and buff Orps all go broody here.

 

[TXmom]

My little 30 week old Silkie Sammie went broody after laying only 17 eggs. We put 6 of our own mixed eggs under her and she was a great broody...really seemed to "care" about her eggs. She's now a great mommy to 2 baby chicks (we lost 2 chicks but that's another story). She's so sweet to her babies, talking to them and teaching them about what to eat, even picking up food and dropping it in front of them.

This is right after the babies hatched...the red one is still resting and drying off.

 

[JestersEye]

I thought my favorite Blue Orp hen was going broody, but now she seems to be over it. I left eggs with her for the last week or so, but I finally took them away because I haven't seen her on the nest at all over the last two or three days, and they felt cold when I touched them yesterday.

This is the second time she has "fooled" me into leaving eggs with her. How can you tell if a hen is really broody or not??? It's especially difficult because all three hens insist on laying in the same nest box, even though there are three more boxes in the coop. Is there anything I can do to encourage our hens to go broody or stay broody long enough to hatch out some chicks? Could it be that she's still too young to get the idea properly? (She's just about a year old.)

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Each hen seems to have her own component of broody skills, some just do a better job than others. Next time you may want to move the potential broody to her own place so she doesn't keep getting interrupted by the other hens. That might help her decide to stay broody until her chicks hatch. I move my broody hens in stages, and ALWAYS make their changes well after dark. If I can move both the hen and her nest box together I will.

First I wait a few days & nights to make sure the hen is really broody, that she wants to stay in the nest all day & night.

Then I'll move the hen (and nest if possible) to her broody pen. Some place cozy & secluded with enough room to get up and eat, drink & poop. Often it helps to shade the pen with something to make it nice & dim all day.

Since most of my broodies are bantams, I wait to see if she stays on the nest in the new pen, then I'll swap out the little eggs she's been incubating for others from my standard-breed laying hens. I don't want to make any more bantams for a while, but prefer larger chicks to hatch.

 

[JestersEye]

This morning two of the blue orp hens are sitting in nest boxes... and one is the same hen that's been acting broody off and on. I'm going to check them again a little later and see if they're still sitting. At least, the second hen has finally decided to use a different nest box, for a change. Even with the abundance of nest boxes that they have to choose from, I found an egg sitting outside the coop just lying on the dirt. Talk about a lazy hen!

 

[Uppity Peon]

That's what my 2 RIR layers are doing. They seem to sing their song before laying and then they rest for about an hour after laying, sitting on thir egg.