Help! chicken not coming out of nesting box

[septamy]

Okay I need help!! I am new to the back yard chickens, and I have a 1 1\2 year old tan hen. She has been laying eggs great but then last week she just stopped and won't come out of her nesting box. My husband tried to check and see if there was an egg stuck but he could not feel anything. We have been trying to take her out of there, to at least eat and drink which she does when she comes out but as soon as she goes back in the coop she is right back in the hen house. Now yesterday we noticed that on her once side her wings are all hacked up (almost as if she is pulling out her feathers) Like I said I am new to the chicken thing but I am hoping someone has some clues\ideas of what I could check for.

Thanks

 

[GrandmaChickie]

Do you have to move her to collect the other hen's eggs? If so, she has gone broody and is trying to hatch them out. Does she "grumble" at you for moving her or act lethargic and weak, as if she just didn't want to get up?

 

[mondotomhead]

I also think that she has gone broody. Broody hens go into a trance-like state and will just sit there staring at nothing. Does she almost "scream" at you if you try to get close? Broody hens actually will come out to eat, drink and poo but usually so fast you won't notice. She may of messed up her feathers if she is pressed up close to the side of the nesting box.

If you have a rooster you probably will have chicks in about two weeks!

 

[septamy]

when we open the door by her nesting area she makes noises and kinda sticks up her butt, and puffs all up. It just seems like when we take her out of her nesting box she is contantly wanting to nest..in the grass..in the dirt.. then she just goes right back in.

if she has gone broody. how do you fix that? Can you fix that??

 

[GrandmaChickie]

There are some good posts on how to break a broody hen on here. I just broke one, but it took about two weeks. Every morning, I had to take her out of the nestbox and put her in another pen without access to the coop or nest boxes. Then I would put her back in the coop for the night, as it is super-secure, and I don't take chances with my chicken-babies. However, for hard-to-break broodiness, I believe they recommend a wire cage without any comfortable place to sit, so there's no inclination for it. At least that's what I've gathered from my reading.

 

[septamy]

okay I will have to try that then. I was hoping that she wasn't sick or anything. I guess it is just a guess and rule out thing.

 

[GrandmaChickie]

Yes, if there are no other symptoms of sickness, I'd start with that.

 

[mondotomhead]

when we open the door by her nesting area she makes noises and kinda sticks up her butt, and puffs all up. It just seems like when we take her out of her nesting box she is contantly wanting to nest..in the grass..in the dirt.. then she just goes right back in.

This is EXACTLY what my broody hen did. (I'm glad she isn't sick)

 

[GrandmaChickie]

This was actually my first broody-bustin'! LOL! I was afraid my little bantam cochin would be more stubborn, and I hated the idea of putting her in isolation in a wire cage. So glad I didn't have to. I was even able to put the other bantam cochin in with her, so she wasn't all by herself.

 

[Dee Holt]

Hello everyone, just want to tell everyone my current experience with a broody hen. She is one year old yesterday and her first round of broodiness two months ago we broke up by just taking her out of the box repeatedly and closing up the coop for a few hours to be sure she ate and drank. The second round of broodiness was much more serious. She began just two weeks after her last one ended, we continued to remove her from the box. When she had laid a set number of eggs, which we removed daily, she just quit laying. After a month of this, with us taking her outside for the day, but the minute we opened up the chicken door, she dashed back into her box, I consulted an exotic animal vet. She feared there might be a soft egg inside her, causing her not to lay and causing her being stuck in the broody mode. I took her in for an exam and the vet recommended an xray (now, I doubt if most people would go this far, but I think they might find the same thing that I did if they had) to see just what might be going on, she did find "something abnormal". The xray showed her crop full of the calcium supplement we keep in a hopper and also that her bones were seriously deficient, almost like osteoporosis. I might add that her comb was smaller and paler and also her wattles. She put her on a vitamin d supplement and felt that lack of sunshine daily was a huge factor. She switched her over to Purina layer pellets, although I am not convinced that is a problem because I had my girls on Blue Seal organic layer pellets with a hopper of calcium and I also feed them organic micro greens, tomatoes, fruit in moderation, etc. She also had me stop all feeding of scratch grains and the daily ear of sweet corn, as chickens tend to fill up on this and not their layer rations, which I agreed with. Well, to our surprise, just the stress of the trip to the vet broke the broody spell and she is on her new diet and supplement and laying in the sunshine daily and seems to be on the mend two weeks later! The seriousness of this can't be underestimated. It seems their ribcage can collapse and break due to this lack of bone density and we would not have ever known it if I had not gotten the xray. So I hope I save somebody some money and let them know to break that broody spell, even if it means taking them on a road trip. - Dee Holt -