Somethings not right!

dustcover

In the Brooder
May 8, 2016
41
6
37
One of my mixed-flock of nine hens, heretofore healthy, is displaying strange behavior. She’s a two-year-old Rhode Island Red that went through a brooding cycle last October. After which she rejoined the daily routine of the rest of the flock but did not resumes laying until around the beginning of the year.

Within the past few days she has again begun occupying one of the nesting boxes continuously. At night I lift her from the box and position her on one of the roosting rods in the coop along with the others. But she commences to leave her roosting perch and returns to the nest where I find her each morning. She seems quite subdued and lethargic.

So this morning I removed her from the nest and as opposed to leaving her in the run with the others, I put her out in the backyard to free roam. She immediately found a spot to excavate a hole in the soft ground and commenced giving herself a quite lengthy dust bath. After awhile she got up and roamed freely about pausing to taste some of the vegetation. I’m not seeing any visual physical impediments but she found another location to excavate and resumed giving herself further dust bathes.

Although I’ve witnessed each of the others in the flock giving themselves occasional dust bathes in the run, usually they are of a brief nature. Her continuous dust bathes suggests to me that this is more than the emergence of another brooding cycle.


I clean the coop daily, and provide a top nutritional diet for all of my birds resulting in their remarkably good health. But the behavior of this one bird is befuddling.

Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
 
I am pretty sure that she is broody or wanting to sit on eggs to hatch them. Take a look at her belly to see if she is missing feathers their. That is classic. They sit in a trance, may growl or peck at you when you try to touch them, and when they briefly leave their nest once or twice a day, will pass a large smelly bright green dropping, known as a broody poop.Hopefully, that is all that is going on. To break of this, you will need to confine her to a large crate or pen with food and water, but little bedding, for at least 5 days.

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