Help! Something is wrong with my chickens and I don’t know what!

[CharzTheChickenLover]

Hi, I’m a fairly new chicken owner and I own three chickens. They’ve been acting pretty normally but recently something weird has been going on. Sorry by the way this will be quite a long post. It all started when one of my chickens wasn’t coming outside she was staying inside the egg box and just sitting there. I would have to physically pull her out to get her to come outside to play. My chickens are not free range and they come out for two hours a day after and before I go to school this is about seven in the morning and around four in the evening. She then stopped playing for a while. Then I noticed another chicken doing the same things and not laying. My other chicken was absolutely fine though and she would run around and play. Today I went to let them out in the evening and they were all huddled inside. None of them wanted to come outside and I never see them come outside during the day. The food and water containers of pretty full and they’re not eating or drinking much. My other chicken is still laying but the other two aren’t. They didn’t not want to come outside or eat any treats I tried to give them. They also are making incredibly large poos. I really don’t know what to do and nothing like this has ever happened before. I have to physically pull them out of the coop because they will all sit on one another and refuse to move. I don’t know what to do please could someone let me know what they think could be going on. Thanks.

 

[springvalley123]

It sounds like they're broody, the large poos were the clincher. You need a "broody breaker jail" which is a wire crate with food and water, no bedding. It should have a wire bottom, so they can't hunker down into the bedding. Keep them in there 24/7 and this shoudl break them. Try releasing them, and if they go straight back to the nest, they're still broody. Often it's just one hen, but can be several in the flock getting the signal to procreate. (They don't realize their eggs aren't fertile because there's no rooster)

 

[sourland]

All have gone broody. They want to set on and hatch eggs.

 

[AmeraucanaHank]

All have gone broody. They want to set on and hatch eggs.

2x

 

[CharzTheChickenLover]

But only one is laying?

 

[CharzTheChickenLover]

Also when I let them out they are being very noisy

 

[CharzTheChickenLover]

I don’t have space to put them anywhere else to break them. Is there any other way?

 

[springvalley123]

You can try blocking off the nestboxes. Maybe you could make a corner of the coop, absolutely free of bedding, but at this point with multiple birds being broody, you probably need to put them in a broody wire crate with the wire bottom, up off the ground. It really is harmful to the birds to stay broody, as you've noticed, they hardly eat or drink, only come off the nest for a while to do so.

 

[springvalley123]

I don’t have space to put them anywhere else to break them. Is there any other way?

I should have also said: You put the broody cage in the coop. It only needs to be about 18x24 inches. You can put it on blocks. I don't know about putting two broodies in a single cage though.

 

[CharzTheChickenLover]

Okay, thank you so much for your help. I only have chickens in my back garden. It’s not a very big garden so I don’t have that much room. Do you know where I could get a wire cage from? Can I make one?