When I voiced that separation wasn't necessary depending on her hens pecking order Ive nearly had my head bitten if for suggesting it.
What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that this stuff is not new. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese were incubating and brooding chicks thousands of years ago. No broody hens involved. Farmers have been free ranging chicken flocks for thousands of years, including broody hens hatching and raising chicks with the flock. Before they were domesticated feral broody hens raised chicks with a feral flock and they never went extinct. Keeping chickens isn't something that just started a couple of years ago, though there are some people on this forum that seem to believe that.
Something that has changed though is how the chickens are kept. The way that farmers and even people in villages kept chickens gave them a lot of room. Typically they were not shoehorned into tiny spaces like many people keep them in their backyards now. 4 square feet in the coop and 10 square feet in the run is not normal and natural for a flock of chickens with a rooster, hens, and broody hens raising chicks. It's kind of cramped. It can be made to work for some flocks but it gets more challenging if you are integrating chickens or raising chicks with the flock. More room is tremendously better for that. A broody hen has more room to work and the chicks can handle the pecking order themselves after the broody hen weans them if they have enough room to work. The tighter you squeeze them the harder that gets.
For some people isolating a broody hen and her chicks might be the best thing to do. But if their space is that tight I would not want to be the one trying to integrate those chicks or that hen later.
Something else that would come as "breaking news" (I hate that phrase but sometimes it is appropriate) is that we don't all have the exact same conditions or even goals. Many people have less than 10 square feet per chicken outside. Even when mine are really crowded I have over 60 square feet per chicken, when less crowded over 350 square feet per chicken. With that kind of room they are going to act differently. It's hard for me to emphasize how much difference room has on their behaviors. If we house them, feed them, and manage them differently we get different results. Since we are dealing with living animals and each has it own personality we can house, feed, and manage them the same and still get different results.
Rant is over. We now return to normal programming.
