moving a broody

[lowtechcowboy]

Hello to all; I have a Buff I believe has gone broody(all zoned out,hasn't moved all day) This is day one. She's parked now in a regular nest box. How should I move her, and to what size/sort of area? This is my first time having hens brood, I'm glad it's happening, This is coming up on my 1st year aniversary having chickens and could use some advice.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Congratulations. Many people are envious.

It is usually best to move her at night with as little light and commotion as you can manage.

The area you lock her in needs a nest, obviously. It is best to have the nest itself kind of dark. Have a lip on it to keep the bedding and eggs in. The nest box itself should not be in the sunlight so it will not turn into an oven. It helps to have some ventilation. You don't want her cooking or suffocating in there.

You need enough room for her to get off the nest and go poo without fouling her nest, the feeder or waterer. You will probably wind up cleaning the poop out of there, so give yourself access. You also need a feeder and waterer in this area.

Hope that helps. Good luck!!!

 

[elmo]

My nestboxes are portable. Two are plastic bins, the third one is a covered kitty litter box. I have two broody hens right now, with the third one possibly ready to go broody any time now.

What I've been doing is moving the nestbox with the hen in it. It gets too hot inside the coop during the day, so I move the nestboxes outside to the run in the shade. It makes me nervous to have them sitting there out in the run at night, so I move the boxes back inside the coop at night time. I know I'm going to want to separate the hens for hatching when the time comes, but for now this is what has been working for me.

 

[lowtechcowboy]

Thanks for the tips, I'm hoping the brooding works out, It's been our intention to have our hens brood, and assimilate the biddies into the flock(sort of a revolving perpetual continuation) Is it practical or have I watched too many Foghorn Leghorn cartoons?

 

[Ridgerunner]

That's close to what I try to do, but since I raise chickens for meat as well as eggs and I will never get all the broodies I need for that, I went ahead and got an incubator. I intend to raise my own replacement layers and roosters as well as lots of extras for meat. You can keep doing that but eventually you will lose so much genetic diversity that you need to introduce new blood. You can enhance certain traits by selective inbreeding. For example, selecting your keeper pullets from eggs laid by hens that go broody will improve your odds of getting broody hens in the future. But with inbreeding you raise the possibility if enhancing traits you don't want, like maybe a physical deformity or loss of fertility. Even accounting for the mutations, all our current chicken breeds were developed by selective inbreeding. Breeders develop grand champion show birds by using selective inbreeding programs, but they have to occasionally introduce new blood to keep the genetic diversity up. You may be able to go several generations without introducing new blood, or your chickens may have something in their genetics where your plan just does not work out well.

My parents kept a self-perpetuating flock, but every 4 or 5 years, Dad would bring home about a dozen chicks from the co-op to bring in new blood.

In any case, if you hatch your own, you will get an excess of roosters and likely more hens that you need. Do you have a plan for how to deal with that?