We've got two RIRs in our flock. Both have gone broody and we've had 7 healthy birds from them. One has been laying for about 2 weeks, and today has gone broody AGAIN. Get some more eggs? Is this normal to be recurrently broody? Any tricks for breaking the brood? We tried persistently kicking her off the nest, hosed her down once (bit mean) and took away the fake eggs... All no joy. Cheers
Some hens just want to be broody all the time. If you want lots of chicks this is great, if you want lots of eggs, not! If you want to break her broodiness you can place her with some food and water in a wire cage for a few days. Broodies' body temperature goes up and by putting them in the cage you make it hard for them to maintain that, so after average 3-4 days they give up and stop being broody. Good luck!
We have two girls who are either raising families or are broody. It's just a matter of a few days after parting with the chicks that they are back on a nest. Nothing I do ever breaks these two, so I usually just let them have an egg each. When my "normal" girls go broody, if I don't want chicks, I just lock them in a separate run that I have with no nest box for a couple of days. that seems to work like a charm.
I agree with the dog cage with water and food. They do tend to spill it so fasten it to the cage. My silkies and mille fleur d'uccle stay broody also, so I can beak them pretty easily in about 3 days.
