Need to de-Broody a young pullet

[GlenChick]

In six months Speedy the Chick has grown into Speedy the Pullet.

Then after three weeks of laying small eggs, Speedy has transformed into Speedy the Broody Pullet.

Busy six months for Speedy.

However the long and short of things is that we don't have room for more chicks/chickens, and we don't have a separate wire cage to de-broody her. We're early into Spring here in Oz and live on top of a plateau, so still an occasional frosty morning. We're thinking of giving her a cold water bath, but it may be too chilly yet to do that and we don't want to risk her health.

Any other suggestions for de-broodying a young pullet?

(I kick her out of the coop as often as I can, and give her outside time when the other hens are let out of the small run for supervised foraging in the garden, but I can't deny her complete access to the coop as the three other hens are all laying.)

 

[ChickenCanoe]

The tried and true method of breaking a broody is to put them in an elevated wire bottom cage with a little food and water. It only takes a couple of days of cool air reaching the bottom to break the hormone cycle.

You don't have to have a real cage. We always made them out of welded wire fencing and just wire them together and hung them from the ceiling of the hen house.

About the only other thing you can try is putting ice in the nest.
The underbody has to be cooled.

 

[GlenChick]

Thanks, I'll try the ice-bag in the nesting box trick tomorrow (have to go to work soon) and see how that goes.

 

[sweetbeak]

Hi , i also live in australia and in the high country of Victoria so also very frosty still. My trick is to wrap an ice pack in a teatowel, wet the teatowel and sit it under her. 3 days and she'll be over it. Only thing is you need to change it a few times per day to keep cold. Other option is the quick dunk in water which also work.

 

[GlenChick]

I tried the dunking method, followed by an extended run in the garden - no luck. So I put some large icecubes in a snaplock bag and now she's sitting on those...

 

[ChickenCanoe]

The broody jail cage is sooo much less work and so effective.

If you have a little bit of fencing, some wire and perhaps a few sticks you can make one pretty fast. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just needs to keep them from sitting on the ground or in a nest.
If you lock them out of the coop, they'll just lay on the ground warming their belly till the coop opens up again.