- Sep 12, 2012
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I have another broody hen right now too.
But I want to stress why it was a good idea to raise a broody hen and her chicks with the main flock.... and the cons.
In my main pen, I have a huge mix of chickens. I have large-fowl Ameraucana, Buff Polish, Sumatra, Phoenix, and a couple of Leghorn hens. And I have bantam Cochin, Porcelain D'uccle, Columbian Wyandotte, and Silkies in there. Then pen is very large (17-foot by 20-foot) made out of an old above-ground pool wall (thin sheet metal) held up and attached to 4x4's, with a home-made gate made out of lattice and screen. We have a giant landscaping net over the top to keep the predators out, and the chickens in. Inside of it, we have an old wood-and-wire rabbit hutch (5-foot by 2 foot) and an old wooden workshop table with plywood attached to the sides and more plywood "leaned" against it to enclose most of it. It provides them two semi-enclosed spaces to nest. And in the rabbit hutch I have one nest box that is 1-foot cubed, made out of plywood. And I have two of those under the old table. So there is privacy to nest, but I can get to everything, and all of the chickens can get to everything. Nothing is too small for anyone in the flock.
The cochin hens were with the main flock prior to me getting the frizzle cochin roo. When I want to breed specific chickens together, I move them to an old dog kennel.
But prior to that, the cochin hens would go broody every time I bothered to look. The exception was actually during our dry-time this summer (late July to early September). I wasn't worried too much about the chicks when they were in the big pen - they were just "utility hens" meant to keep the bantam roosters happy and curb aggression. So when they went broody in there, I left them. And they hatched chicks.... lots of chicks. They successfully kept ALL of the other chickens from hurting the babies - including the large Ameraucana roo. It was rather funny, this tiny bantam hen puffing up at a huge roo.
But because of the broody hens, to this day, I can add chicks from the incubator and brooder set-up into the pen without them being attacked. The bigger chickens are just too familiar with babies being around, and they let them run around their feet like we expect little children to do at a playground. That is BY FAR the biggest advantage of letting a broody hen stay with the main flock. Even though the broody hens are no longer there, I'm still adding little chicks in now and then once they are ready for the normal weather, and not having any problems with it. I do have to add more than one, so they have someone to "hang out" with though. If I add just one, the chick himself will be scared of everyone, and I've found them wedged behind nest boxes and water troughs to get away from the others - with no sign of damage from being pecked. I even observed one just freaking out about these "strangers" around him, and get himself stuck in odd places. But no one bothered HIM.
Another advantage was the "community raising". Any hen that was close to being broody would help raise ALL of the babies. After a while, they all just got mixed up, and would nest under whoever they could find room under. When one hen called to them about food, they ALL came running. Every hen was everybody's momma! And every chick was everybody's baby!
But there are disadvantages. As with any broody hen, the babies she raises become hard to catch. She'll try to protect them from us as well as the rest of the flock, and the babies learn to avoid us. But separating her allows us to get into her space and learn to TRUST us with her babies, so they trust us at the same time. Another problem I ran into was in not MARKING the eggs I set under the broody. The other hens kept laying in those nest boxes, and I couldn't tell which one was freshly laid and which one I had set in there without candling them. And that meant I had to wait until night time to disturb her and the eggs for candling, or bring two eggs at a time into the house, 100 feet away, and into my closet to get a dark enough space to candle them. And with her trying to sit on 12 eggs, that was a LOT of back-and-forth to the house!
And then came the times when I had more than one broody. The hens would play musical nest boxes, and switch up a lot, taking over each other's box. One would get up and go eat, come back, and sit in the wrong box while that hen was up eating. Then the second hen came back to her box, and knowing it was her box, tried to squeeze in with the first hen. Meanwhile, the first hen's eggs were not being kept warm. This also became a bigger problem once the babies were hatched. The babies followed the hens, so leaving a nest box didn't matter as much. But two hens trying to situate themselves in a nest box with so many babies resulted in a few trampled chicks.
On top of those issues, I also realized that the hens could not have chicks that hatched more than a day or two apart. I had one hen that was a week away from her own hatch day for her eggs when the other two nests hatched. The still-sitting hen abandoned her eggs to help take care of these babies from the other two nest boxes, as though they were her own. I had to rescue those eggs and get them into the incubator for that final week.
So there is my full (and very wordy) story about why separating them is both a bad idea and a good idea. In hindsight, I'm not sure I would purposely separate them at all. I think the pros are even with the cons, and vice versa. So really, whenever my hens go broody from now on, I'll just leave them in whatever situation they are in - separate or not!
But I want to stress why it was a good idea to raise a broody hen and her chicks with the main flock.... and the cons.
In my main pen, I have a huge mix of chickens. I have large-fowl Ameraucana, Buff Polish, Sumatra, Phoenix, and a couple of Leghorn hens. And I have bantam Cochin, Porcelain D'uccle, Columbian Wyandotte, and Silkies in there. Then pen is very large (17-foot by 20-foot) made out of an old above-ground pool wall (thin sheet metal) held up and attached to 4x4's, with a home-made gate made out of lattice and screen. We have a giant landscaping net over the top to keep the predators out, and the chickens in. Inside of it, we have an old wood-and-wire rabbit hutch (5-foot by 2 foot) and an old wooden workshop table with plywood attached to the sides and more plywood "leaned" against it to enclose most of it. It provides them two semi-enclosed spaces to nest. And in the rabbit hutch I have one nest box that is 1-foot cubed, made out of plywood. And I have two of those under the old table. So there is privacy to nest, but I can get to everything, and all of the chickens can get to everything. Nothing is too small for anyone in the flock.
The cochin hens were with the main flock prior to me getting the frizzle cochin roo. When I want to breed specific chickens together, I move them to an old dog kennel.
But prior to that, the cochin hens would go broody every time I bothered to look. The exception was actually during our dry-time this summer (late July to early September). I wasn't worried too much about the chicks when they were in the big pen - they were just "utility hens" meant to keep the bantam roosters happy and curb aggression. So when they went broody in there, I left them. And they hatched chicks.... lots of chicks. They successfully kept ALL of the other chickens from hurting the babies - including the large Ameraucana roo. It was rather funny, this tiny bantam hen puffing up at a huge roo.
But because of the broody hens, to this day, I can add chicks from the incubator and brooder set-up into the pen without them being attacked. The bigger chickens are just too familiar with babies being around, and they let them run around their feet like we expect little children to do at a playground. That is BY FAR the biggest advantage of letting a broody hen stay with the main flock. Even though the broody hens are no longer there, I'm still adding little chicks in now and then once they are ready for the normal weather, and not having any problems with it. I do have to add more than one, so they have someone to "hang out" with though. If I add just one, the chick himself will be scared of everyone, and I've found them wedged behind nest boxes and water troughs to get away from the others - with no sign of damage from being pecked. I even observed one just freaking out about these "strangers" around him, and get himself stuck in odd places. But no one bothered HIM.
Another advantage was the "community raising". Any hen that was close to being broody would help raise ALL of the babies. After a while, they all just got mixed up, and would nest under whoever they could find room under. When one hen called to them about food, they ALL came running. Every hen was everybody's momma! And every chick was everybody's baby!
But there are disadvantages. As with any broody hen, the babies she raises become hard to catch. She'll try to protect them from us as well as the rest of the flock, and the babies learn to avoid us. But separating her allows us to get into her space and learn to TRUST us with her babies, so they trust us at the same time. Another problem I ran into was in not MARKING the eggs I set under the broody. The other hens kept laying in those nest boxes, and I couldn't tell which one was freshly laid and which one I had set in there without candling them. And that meant I had to wait until night time to disturb her and the eggs for candling, or bring two eggs at a time into the house, 100 feet away, and into my closet to get a dark enough space to candle them. And with her trying to sit on 12 eggs, that was a LOT of back-and-forth to the house!
And then came the times when I had more than one broody. The hens would play musical nest boxes, and switch up a lot, taking over each other's box. One would get up and go eat, come back, and sit in the wrong box while that hen was up eating. Then the second hen came back to her box, and knowing it was her box, tried to squeeze in with the first hen. Meanwhile, the first hen's eggs were not being kept warm. This also became a bigger problem once the babies were hatched. The babies followed the hens, so leaving a nest box didn't matter as much. But two hens trying to situate themselves in a nest box with so many babies resulted in a few trampled chicks.
On top of those issues, I also realized that the hens could not have chicks that hatched more than a day or two apart. I had one hen that was a week away from her own hatch day for her eggs when the other two nests hatched. The still-sitting hen abandoned her eggs to help take care of these babies from the other two nest boxes, as though they were her own. I had to rescue those eggs and get them into the incubator for that final week.
So there is my full (and very wordy) story about why separating them is both a bad idea and a good idea. In hindsight, I'm not sure I would purposely separate them at all. I think the pros are even with the cons, and vice versa. So really, whenever my hens go broody from now on, I'll just leave them in whatever situation they are in - separate or not!
