Managing/Encouraging broody hens with a "Broody Box" ***Hatching Pics!

[Chic Chick]

Good luck to everyone with broodies and with successful hatches!
Right now I have a silkie with week old chicks penned off in the "laying" coop, and a broody marans hen on a doz or so eggs that should be hatching any day now. She is in a nest in another corner and the rest of the flock has not bothered her at all these past few weeks. I also have a silkie hen in a loft pen in the "chick/winter" coop on 8 eggs, and a silkie in the tractor with the rest of her color, on 6 eggs. Then I have a australorp that has plucked her feathers on her chest and sits on the fake eggs at night now.
I always mark the eggs so that I can take out any new eggs if another hen decides to lay in the nest, but most of the time I will move the broody to a quiet, out of the way nest as far as possible from the favorite nests and I don't usually have problems with new eggs or broken ones.
If a broody won't stay on the new nest when you move her, cover her with a box, tub or whatever and let her out to eat/poop for a few days until she adjusts to it and goes back to it on her own.

 

[Winsor Woods]

Thanks to everyone for their moral support. No changes yet. Not pips or peeps. There was another egg kicked out of the nest yesterday evening and it was cracked open. It had a partially developed chick inside and smelled quite awful.

I think I'm going to take her off the clutch tomorrow (Day 25) and give my other broody a shot at incubating a clutch.

I came into this spring with 8 laying hens and I was getting 6-8 eggs per day. I've since lost one hen to unknown cause of death and now two are broody so I'm only getting 3-4 eggs a day. I'm looking forward to increasing my flock size but I've got to get through this broodiness. If this second hen's clutch doesn't work out, I'll just buy some laying peeps when I get my next order of meat birds. I'm also going to start making a nice cabinet style incubator. I like letting the hen do the work but it's so frustrating watching unsuccessful hatches.

Dan

 

[flakey chick]

WW
You might be successful grafting chicks to a broody with a failed hatch. That way you can still let mama do all the work (and perhaps it will be a little less frustrating for the hen too).

My broody is just 1 week away from hatch.

My other hen seems a bit stressed and lonely. First she started trying to crow, then she started to go broody too, but we took away the second nest. Whenever I give her a treat, she tosses it about and calls out to her imaginary chicks to come eat. I hope it's not too stressful when Nissa has chicks (and she doesn't). I'd give her a couple of Nissa's eggs to sit on, but I'm afraid the outcome would be even more stressful for all involved.

 

[Dingleberry]

Dumb ? So the broddy hen sits on all the hens layed eggs? not just hers that she lays? I am thinking I may want a hen to go broddy this fall.

 

[flakey chick]

Most hens will sit on golf balls or anything egg shaped when they are in the broody mood. As the incubation progresses, they get smarter and and kick out the ones that aren't progressing right. horsejody had a hen attempt to hatch a toy dinosaur and teenage mutant ninja turtle.

 

[Winsor Woods]

Yesterday was tough. I pulled "Donner" off of the nest and threw the eggs in the compost pile. I cleaned out the Broody box and scrubbed the nest platform. I let it dry/disinfect in the sun for a few hours before returning the platform to the broody box. I made a fresh nest out of pine needles and put in my wooden eggs. "Dottie," who you may remember from the very first attempt, is the other broody hen. (She's really broody this time.) She took to the new nest and wooden eggs like a pro. If she's still settled down by the end of the day, I'll put a new clutch of real eggs under her and start the clock again. I'm only going to put 10-12 eggs under her.

Donner was looking around for her eggs and didn't want to leave the coop so she and I had a date with some ice water. A quick dunk and she seemed to forget all about being broody.

I'll keep you all posted.

Dan

 

[Winsor Woods]

Donner was out all day free-ranging with the rest of the flock. She still looks like she's out of sorts so I'm keeping an eye on her nest box time. Dottie has been incubating like a champ. I replaced the wooden eggs with real ones last night, under the cover of darkness. Another thing I did this time that I didn't before was to candle the eggs before putting them under the hen. I was able to select the ones that had a decent air pocket and culled all the porous eggs from the get-go. Hopefully this will help the hatch percentage.

I opened up the broody box today to see if Dottie wanted to stretch her legs but she just stayed right inside and sat on those eggs. I think I'll candle them at 3 days and then again at 7. After that, I may just leave well enough alone.

Dan

 

[Winsor Woods]

End of Day 2 for Dottie. She's doing great. After I let the rest of the flock out to free-range, I closed the coop and opened the broody box to give her an opportunity to stretch her legs and take a dust bath. She didn't leave the box so after about an hour I closed it back up and left the coop open for the other layers to come back and do their egg laying thing if they wanted to.

Donner seems to be adjusting well to her non broody state. She was out all day free ranging and hopped up onto the high roost bar for the first time since this broodiness phase started.

One question though...When I lifted Dottie up to peek at the eggs, she had one egg pulled up on top of the rest of the clutch. Is this normal? I thought all the eggs would be on the same layer. Would the eggs underneath of that egg get the right body heat from her? Just curious if I need to re-adjust the clutch. Dottie is a larger hen than Donner and I've started the clutch with 12 eggs so it's a smaller clutch than Donner's.

Dan

 

[rittert3]

Good topic, very good reading so far

 

[tracyork]

Hi Dan,
I admittedly am no expert on this broody hen thing... I think they (the hens) are constantly rotating and adjusting the eggs, sort of like an incubator does, so I wouldn't worry. When I picked up my broody hen, she had eggs all stuck up in her fluff and under her wings! I would just candle them after a few days to make sure they are going, and then let her do her business after that.

Around here we have had a bit of excitement/ concern as well. I moved one of my hens to the broody box the other night, to adjust before placing hatching eggs under her the following day. She had some fake eggs, but was having none of the broody box. First thing in the morning she was making a racket wanting out of the broody box. I left here in there for a while, but she started pulling the nest apart, so I figured that was it. We let her out to free range in the afternoon with the other girls. She squawked about and acted weird for a while and then beelined straight back to the coop and took residence on a different nest box, containing a couple of the days eggs. Should have thought that through a little better! So I extracted the good eggs from under her (not fertile) and gave her back her fakes. If she is still on the nest today, I'm just going to let her do her thing in the coop with the others. I know it isn't optimal, but I don't know what else to do. The broody box only made her agitated but didn't break her will. I'm guessing that the broody box wasn't dark or enclosed enough for her and that was why se didn't like it? For convenience, we used an extra large dog crate we had around (saw that idea on here), but built a nice wooden nest box to go inside, same exact dimensions as the ones in the coop. I didn't consider the fact that with the mesh side windows and door, that is a lot more light than she was probably used to in the coop. Not going to try it again on this hen. Maybe next time...