My first broody hen - Help!

[Kate09]

Hi everyone!

I usually lurk on this website and very rarely post but I'm in need of a bit of help.

Basically, my hen, Baba (named after Baba au Rhum, keeping with my french roots!) has become incredibly broody.

I noticed it last night but it was too late for me to do anything but it's pretty obvious this morning. I've noticed her feathers are dotted around the nesting boxes and she has a bald patch on the bottom of her breast where I assume she's been plucking out her feathers.

I've read on various different websites on how to 'break a broody hen' but a lot of the information conflict with each other.

I can't make a 'broody breaker' due to me not having the materials to do that. The best I can do for the moment is to keep the roof up on the nesting box to keep it light and to ensure a draft is going through it (just to clarify I have five hens in total and two coops, babies in one coop and the big girls in the other so there is another coop with other nesting boxes for the other hens) but with the weather being so disgusting in South Wales at the moment, I'm reluctant to keep it open. I've removed all eggs and bedding from that one coop too.

I'd like to make this as stress free for her as possible! Any help greatly appreciated.

Kate and Baba

 

[QueenMisha]

Unfortunately, it's somewhat necessary to stress a bird in order to break her. They are doing something they are quite happy with, but you don't want them to do, and you have to convince them not to do it.

Are you sure you don't have any kind of wire cage lying around? I doubt that leaving her in the nest with only the roof opened is going to do anything. A hen at my workplace has been brooding for over a month now in a completely open chain-link coop. The air needs to actually flow across the belly, which is impossible in a cage that isn't wire.

 

[Kate09]

Thank you for your post.

I don't have any wire, I could look around but I think I'll just have to get some tomorrow.

I heard about putting things in the nesting boxes?

 

[QueenMisha]

Thank you for your post.

I don't have any wire, I could look around but I think I'll just have to get some tomorrow.

I heard about putting things in the nesting boxes?

OK. Be sure to get stiff wire; something sturdy enough to hold her weight, and not with so large of holes as to allow her feet or toes to fall through.

Things? You mean like objects, just to change the environment? I think that foreign objects in the nesting box would disturb the hen, but probably not enough to break her. However, enough strange things, and she might eventually leave. I've never tried the method so I can't really say with any certainty.

 

[Kate09]

I have a very sturdy and incredibly big dog cage? Would that be of any use?

And when I mean 'things' yes I mean foreign objects! Sorry for the poor english.

 

[QueenMisha]

I have a very sturdy and incredibly big dog cage? Would that be of any use?

And when I mean 'things' yes I mean foreign objects! Sorry for the poor english.

If it's wire, yes. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as her belly is exposed to cold air. When this happens, the hen will think, "Oh no! My eggs have gotten cold and died. I may as well give up now." You could probably set a wire frame on bricks and tip a cardboard box over on top of it and it would still work.

I think that enough brightly colored, large, or otherwise disturbing objects might have an effect on the hen; they would certainly be upsetting (which is exactly what we are going for), since chickens don't like changes in their environment.

 

[Kate09]

Fantastic, thank you very much.

I'll try the foreign objects tactic first and if that fails, the dog cage. Only because, I've just seen where it is in my shed and I need help getting it out!

Thank you!

 

[aart]

Wire dog crates work great, but you may have to line the floor of it with smaller mesh after taking the tray out.

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 couple of 4x4's right in the coop and I would feed her some 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.