Is my 19 week old WL acting broody?

[Chickens in Elmwood]

Ok, Rosie has always been an odd little chicken. She is the only petite little leggern among my flock of dual purpose birds. She is Queen Chick and rules the others with an iron beak. haha

She laid her first egg yesterday. Actually, she laid two eggs yesterday and another this afternoon. I found the two yesterday and my kiddos were so excited that we whisked them away promptly for pictures and then stuck them in the fridge.

She had dug a little hole in the dirt and layed the eggs in her "nest" I was trying to get her to lay in the nest box, so I smoothed out her nest, and put a cinderblock in front of it with a 5 gallon bucket turned on its side sitting on top of the cinderblock. Inside the bucket I put some straw and a dummy egg from my kids' kitchen set.

I was out messing around in the yard and watched her pacing back and forth in front of that cinderblock, squawking impatiently for about 40 minutes. Then she got clever and crawled through the hole in the cinderblock, under the bucket, and dug her little nest back. It took her about 30 more minutes to do that. Then she climbed out, got in the bucket and fetched out the dummy egg and rolled it through the cinderblock hole. Then she hunkered down and laid her egg under there with the dummy egg. She continued to sit in there for another hour until I opened the coop door to let them free range.

She is so whacky! But fun. Now I feel bad about taking her eggs...although they did make good breakfast this morning.

 

[shandiane78]

This all sounds so entertaining!

BTW, I have a daughter named Rosie. She's also very entertaining.

After my layer (Mavis) lays an egg, she does stay in there and tend to it, as well as to the fake egg for a while. She moves them around, adjusts the bedding, etc. She eventually gets up and goes about her day though. I have also been curious as to whether this is an indication of later broodiness. She'll sit in there with them for an hour or two.