How do you stop broody chicken from being broody

[candychick]

one of my chickens has been broody for the past 21 days and should be done soon, but today another one of my chickens just became broody...we have no roosters so i really dont want them to be broody how do i stop it?

 

[goldiethehen]

I've never tried it, but heard putting ice cubes under the hens discourages broodiness. Also, be sure to collect eggs often from under her.

 

[azygous]

Well, I HAVE tried the ice cube thing and trust me, it doesn't work. Broody hens will be content to sit on anything. And I've tried the dunking in cold water trick, too. Nope. Doesn't work either.

What does work is to place the broody hen in an open-mesh bottom cage with a fan blowing at an angle under her. I currently have my third broody this week in the cage out in the garage. Usually, this method will cure a broody in three days and two nights. You need to keep this up around the clock.

The final test to see if she's broody-broke is to turn her loose and see if she heads directly for a nest box. If she does, she needs another day in the cage.

By the way, I was too busy with the first broody to go to the trouble of setting up the fan, and she stayed stubbornly broody for nine days until I finally broke down and got the fan out. It took just one night with the fan blowing on her underparts to end her broody episode. So the fan is absolutely essential if you want to get this over with fast.

 

[BooBear]

Well I just had 7 broodies all hogging up the nest boxes.

One decided on her own that it was far too boring and she was missing out on treats.

The other 6 needed more convincing to quite so into the spare bachlor/freezer camp prep coop they went.

This quite frightened them as the older ones know whoever is in this pen gets to be dinner. The younger ones just hated being moved.

Basically, if the ice water trick does not work, nor blocking them out of the nest does not work, then, moving them to another coop will do it.
Yes, there will always be a few extra stubborn ones that won't break for nothing. Normally I just let them ride it out till they get fed up as I remove all eggs everyday so they are sitting on empty nests.

I get a bit irritated at them for hogging the nests as the girls that need to lay get mad and start laying out of the coop which means I got to lock everyone up for a few days to a week to get them back to using their nest boxes.

This ofcourse equals a cranky flock.

 

[candychick]

alright thank you