I've got a broody!!!! But we are moving??? What to do!

[SIMPleChick]

I don't know if I am excited about this or not. My first thought was, "Oh I need to get fertile eggs!!!" But we will be putting our house up for sale this week and I don't want her to lose interest in the eggs or chicks if we have to move.....She is an 8 month old Black Australorp, so I know they love to go broodyy, I just didn't realize she would do it SO soon!!! She has only been laying for a couple months or so... She is SO funny though, she sits in the nest ALL puffed up and makes these new, low cooing sounds, like "look at me, I am gonna be a mamma!" She steals all the other hens eggs and puts them under her.... So my question is, do I break her until we move and let her have a go at fertile eggs when we get settled and she goes broody again? We most likely will have an all new coop for them and leaving the one we have here......She is so cute though.....LOL....I'd hate to break her but I don't know how long it will take for our house to sell!!!

 

[Johnn]

why dont you buy some day old chicks then she will have a few days to get really motherley then will just be ok moving with them

 

[peepblessed]

I've never heard of a house selling and closing in less than 30 days. Do you really think things could move that fast?

 

[SIMPleChick]

Oh I know it probably won't sell that quickly. In our area it is estimated 4-6 months....But we technically....guess I could have mentioned this before...shouldn't have as many hens as we do. I THINK we are only allowed to have 3....I have 11.....BAD case of chicken math! And our coop comfortably fits 11 in our .13 acres...LOL...So just a big backyard. I don't know how it will look, while TRYING to sell and showing the house to have 11 hens and who knows how many babies....I can't get another coop here If I have to move the broody and chicks into their own pen... LOL! I just went down to get more eggs, hearing 2 more hens sing their song and Echo had ALREADY gone into each nest and stole their eggs! Little stinker!

 

[peepblessed]

Quote:
LOL! Love those broodies!!

 

[Sphinx]

I was going to say to go ahead and let her hatch some, since houses NEVER sell and close within 30 days.

however, having heard that your lot is only .13 and that you already have almost four times the legal limit of chickens for your neighborhood, I would say that you should definitely break her broodiness and not worry about hatching chicks until you're moved and settled.

 

[SIMPleChick]

Quote:
We knew at the beginning of the year that we would move, we just didn't know if it was going to be around here, but then DH got a new, great job an hour south of us. We didn't plan on having 11 but we knew where we would be moving we could have more, so we checked with neighbors and they were all fine with it. I bribe with eggs! It's just now the showing and selling part I am worried about! My realator is coming over tomorow AND we have another realator bringing a guy to look at the house! I think waiting would be a good idea, I would have loved to have a hen hatch out some babies though, never done it before! Ok....so I'm gonna wait.....

 

[AlienChick]

It seems broody hens will choose the most inopportune time to go broody.

Am I right, or am I right?

We just bought a house last month in another state and all of a sudden THREE of my hens, one by one, went broody. The first hen (a Silkie) just hatched nine babies; the other two hens (a Black Australorp and a d'Uccle) are still sitting on eggs with another week to go. I'm at our new house this week building a chicken coop.

We’ll be moving next week. I’m gonna put all the chickens in crates and the two broody moms in their own little boxes. This will be interesting.

Good luck with yours!