Maybe this is weird.......

Tomilee

Hatching
7 Years
Joined
Mar 13, 2012
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Points
7
I have 4 hens, they are all laying, but I have one that acts broody. I don't have a rooster, and I may be naive, but figured I would need one in order for my hens to act like this. She sits on the nest, which has one egg. She comes out rarely to eat or drink and roam a bit and then right back in. The other 3 hens seem to be picking on her. When she does come out, they chase her away from the food and water. Never had this issue among them before. This has been going on for a week. I'm not sure whether to take the egg or not. I've had these hens for about a year.
 
Sounds broody to me. The egg should be removed, because it isn't fertilized. If you ever want to hatch chicks from broody, you can put gulf balls under her, until you have fertilized eggs ( rooster is needed of course ). Broody hens don't realize that they are sitting on fake eggs, so it works fine. This has worked for me. What breed is your chickens? Normally bantams are better brooders, if you ever think about hatching chicks using a broody hen. And the larger the hen the more eggs under her.

Hope that helps
 
yes, she's broody, take the egg, and if its older than a couple days, I advise you NOT to eat it. yuck,
you can buy fertilized eggz if you want chicks, but do your research first! you sound like a new chicken owner, so good luck!
 
Thank you both, so much! Will she get back to herself? She's a banty, smaller than the other 3. Is that why they pick on her, then? They never did before. I don't want chicks at ghis time, just wqant to make sure she's ok.
 
Last edited:
If you don't want her to hatch out some fertile eggs for you, you should 'break' her of her broodiness.

My experience went like this: After her setting for 3 days and nights in the nest, I put her in a wire dog crate with smaller wire on the bottom but no bedding, set up on a few bricks right in the coop and I would feed her some watered down crumble a couple times a day.

I let her out a couple times a day and she would go out into the run, drop a huge turd, race around running, take a vigorous dust bath then head back to the nest... at which point I put her back in the crate. Each time her outings would lengthen a bit, eating, drinking and scratching more and on the 3rd afternoon she stayed out of the nest and went to roost that evening...event over, back to normal tho she didn't lay for another week or two.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom