My First Broody

[Chicken Mom Leslie]

I have a young Barred Rock who has become broody. I tried taking her our of her next box last night and put duct tape across the front, but then I found her in a different next box by the evening! Now I see that she is camped out on the roll-away bin in front of the nest box (maybe she figured out that's where the eggs are!?). What do I do now? I have nine layers, and she's hogging one-third of the space!

 

[Shadrach]

Generally broody hens are nest specific. It does happen that a hen will just move to the next pile of eggs she finds but it's been rare ime.
What happens here when a hen goes broody that I don't want to sit is this;
I take all the eggs away at dusk and put the broody hen on a perch with the others.
Usually when I open up the next morning she comes out with the others to eat and drink and then goes back to her now empty nest site.
She may spend all day sitting in the empty nest and possibly some of the next.
If she is still sitting on the empty nest at dusk the next day I put her back on the perch with the rest.
So far this year I have had 11 broody hens. four of those have gone broody twice. I have not had to resort to the popular wire cage of broody breaking once.
So try the above. Take her eggs away and see if she'll give up on her own. If she doesn't within a couple of days then try another method.

 

[Chicken Mom Leslie]

Thank you. There are no eggs for her to sit on because we have a roll-away nest. I may try duct-taping all of the nest box openings at dusk so that she can't get into any of them.

 

[aart]

Are you sure she's broody?

These are the signs I look for before calling 'broody':
Is she on nest most the day and all night?
When you pull her out of nest and put her on the ground, does she flatten right back out into a fluffy screeching pancake?
Does she walk around making a low cluckcluckcluckcluckcluck(ticking bomb) sound on her way back to the nest?
If so, then she is probably broody and you'll have to decide how to manage it.

You can continue to remove her from the nest and block the nests(not helpful for the other birds who need to lay tho). That can break them. But if truly broody she will sit on nothing.


If you don't want her to hatch out chicks, best to break her broodiness promptly.
My experience goes about 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 or run with feed and water.

I used to let them out a couple times a day, but now just once a day in the evening(you don't have to) 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. Or take her out of crate daily very near roosting time(30-60 mins) if she goes to roost great, if she goes to nest put her back in crate.
Chunk of 2x4 for a 'roost' was added to crate floor after pic was taken.