Egg Bound? Broody? or just stubborn/dramatic chicken? Please advise!

[EggsFromHome]

My sweet BLR Wyandotte is about 7 1/2 months old. She has been laying ~4 a week since October. She has currently decided to park herself in the nesting box since yesterday afternoon. I managed to pry an egg (that I am fairly confident was hers) out from under her last night, but she is still there - with nothing to sit on.

comb and wattles are her normal brightly colored red/pink.
fluffs up and hollers upon opening of the nesting box door.
not eating or drinking (that I have witnessed)
no poop in the nesting box.
vent is pale pink in color and not swollen.
she mottled in September.
we have 4 girls, no roosters since August 3

I have not given her a hot bath yet, or attempted to lube the vent. I never imagined a possibly broody girl to be so intimidating. We are clearly not friends right now, and she doesn't want me touch her at all. I didn't THINK (per my previous readings) that I any of my girls would be broody because their breed wasn't inclined to do so.

Hope you are all having a better Thanksgiving than my Millie!

 

[sourland]

Millie is fine - she just wants to be a MOM. Enjoy your Thanksgiving and don't worry about her. Tomorrow you can start working on 'breaking' her broodiness.

 

[foreverlearning]

Sounds broody to me. When she starts pulling out breast feathers you know for sure. Always check for lice and mites (broodies are more prone to them) anytime they don't act like normal. Absent any health problems, do you want chicks? If so wait a week and pop some cheap eggs under there. Otherwise, fake eggs and wait it out. Every chicken is different and just because it has been mostly bread out of the breed doesn't mean that there won't ever be one that wants it.

 

[kmollyhughes]

Or get a fertilized egg and let her sit!

I have four broody girls right now. Only one is pretty feisty. We have chicks hatching as I'm typing. Chicken math people...what's one more baby? Heehee Happy Turkey Day!

 

[EggsFromHome]

Thank you for the speedy responses A weight has been lifted off my shoulders! My inexperience in chickens has brought some stress, but more importantly joy, to our little house. I love my girls and tend to worry about them more often than not.

Just curious.... if our roosters have been MIA since August, and the boys were separated from the girls for nearly a month before that. Could we even have fertilized eggs now? I would love to try hatching chicks someday (against the will of my husband), but I worry that our cold weather now would hinder our success even if we got fertilized eggs from an outside source. We started with 4 chicks in April, thought one was not thriving, so we acquired 3 more (just to be safe) and then three of the seven ended up being more rooster than we are allowed to have in our area. So we are back to four.


Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[sourland]

A hen can retain high fertility for two weeks, some fertility for three weeks, and occasional fertility for four weeks after being mated - your hens are no longer laying fertile eggs. I agree that now is not the best time of year to raise chicks. This hen will probably go broody next spring/summer. You could always buy some fertile eggs then.

 

[kmollyhughes]

It's cold here too. Apparently that's didn't effect the babies. 40-50's during the day. Low 20's at night. All eggs were under hens out in coop til last couple days, now they are in garage in large crate. I seriously wasn't expecting as good of a hatch as we're getting. Mamas weren't overloaded with eggs, so think that helped. Oh! And thick pine shavings under them. Babies are healthy and peeping and the 3 that have pipped sound awesome. Breaking them can be a chore, stubborn little things.