Nest full of feathers but no broody…?

[K0k0shka]

No...and No

My poor fluffs... I keep giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I have to admit, they're not the brightest of animals.

 

[K0k0shka]

UPDATE: I ended up breaking that broody eventually, though I did let her sit for a while as inspiration to the others. And it worked! The hen that I actually wanted to use as a broody this year is sitting right now! Wohoo! It's day 2 and she looks pretty committed. She spent all day in the nest yesterday, and all night. This morning she came out to eat and drink, but went back to the nest. She went back to a different nest, because I hadn't collected the eggs yet and there were eggs in both nests... but... as we know, chickens aren't the brightest animals out there. I'll move her to the nest where I want her to sit, after dark tonight, and put her on some fake eggs until I can get her real eggs over the weekend.

The pile of feathers that started this thread match this girl's underfluff color, so I guess they might have been hers all along? Maybe she was preparing way in advance of actually starting to sit?

 

[K0k0shka]

I got 8 Lavender Orpington eggs for her. She's sitting on 5 of them right now, and 3 are in my incubator, because I want to candle them with the kids as they grow (and I wanted to play with my new toy - the incubator I won from a BYC contest ). When they get too hard to see into, I'll give them to her to finish off. This worked out just the way I wanted - the hen I was hoping for ended up going broody, I found local Orp eggs that won't need shipping (I'm so done with shipped eggs), AND I have a new Brinsea incubator that's working SO much better than the crappy LG I was using before!

The only thing left to worry about now is that this mama keeps going to the wrong nest after she takes a break Lucky for her I'm still working from home and can keep an eye on her through the chicken cam, and go out to move her back periodically...

 

[K0k0shka]

I thought I'd update this thread (I like to go back to old threads and report on how an issue got resolved, or how the story ended).

The feathers ended up belonging to the second hen to go broody, the SL Orpington. She went broody again this spring and plucked herself again. Last year she did a really crappy job of both sitting and raising the chicks, so I broke her this year and won't let her sit again. The first hen that went broody on this thread, the DSL Barnevelder, ended up adopting and raising the Orp's chicks last year after she gave up on them prematurely. The Barnevelder is broody again this year so she's the one who gets to be a mom again. She doesn't pluck herself. The plucking seems to be the SL Orpington's trademark.