Wow, this thread is awesome. My white leghorn just went broody a few days ago and I read quite a bit of the thread but I have a couple questions I didn't see. I'm sure they are somewhere in this thread but I'm not sure where. I have 4 nest boxes but all my chickens only lay their eggs in 1 box and it happens to be the box she is in... Will that mess up the other chickens laying or will they go in the other boxes? They will not and have not used the other boxes, ever. Not sure why.
When you break a broody hen do you leave food and water in the cage? If she lays an egg does that mean she is done being broody or when she is social and not running back into the coop?
Hens like to lay in a box where another has already laid. I guess that suggests it is a safe place to lay and the reason people put fake eggs (plastic with a rock to weight it), wooden eggs, golf balls, etc in each nest. Hens will have their favorite nests and if a broody is hogging one a hen higher in the pecking order prefers, she will get shoved out. The broody will come back and sit that nest once it is vacated. Even better now there is an egg (or ANOTHER egg) in their "clutch".
I have a 4' community box and a 4' long 3 nest open box with dividers. All was well until a couple of months ago when one of the 1 year old hens decided she would lay out in the plants in the front yard even though she had been laying in the nest boxes for 8 months. There were 13 eggs in the nest when we finally found it. No rooster so they were not fertile and she showed no signs of being broody.
After a bunch of trauma repeatedly entering and exiting EVERY nest in the coop, she decided a nest I made from a corner grain feeder on the floor of the "feed room" was satisfactory and has laid in it ever since. Maybe it is the saddle pad "hood" I put over it. Though the community box is closed, it is dark in there too. I can't claim to understand the chicken brain.
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Elevate the cage as @oldhenlikesdogs said and yes food and water. You are only trying to make sure they can't stay hot underneath. I made a 'shelf' in the coop 4' up, same height as the roosts, for the buster last summer. But I took it out in the winter since I've never had a bird go broody in the winter. Then that shelf (open frame made of 2x4s) became THE most popular roosting spot for a lot of the birds.
So now the buster is up on a free standing support about 3' off the ground in an adjacent stall converted to a coop of sorts. No nest boxes or permanent food and water stations. It is predator proof only for larger predators, 2x4 wire on the openings. I would have to cover them with 1/2" hardware cloth to make it "most all predator proof". The last broody I had was in the buster (4' long) with a sick hen for a couple of days but I let them out into the coop itself when the sick girl started to improve and she broke anyway. I don't know if it helped that she was off the ground in the cage for a couple of days or just the total lack of anything nest like made a difference.
I'm just a little worried about our girl.
