The Old Folks Home

[vehve]

Anyone have any experience with broodies? We don't have the coop space capacity to add new members to our flock, and I don't have a suitable broody breaker cage at the moment. What if I just let our little Veera sit on her imaginary eggs, will she give up eventually without me intervening? Or is she going to sit on the nest and exhaust herself completely?

 

[chickadoodles]

I fooled my chickens into eating some strawberry yogurt by making a big pot of grits and mixing the yogurt in them because I know they love grits and are scared to try new things. And it worked! I even gave the dogs some. It was a huge pot of grits a nearly a whole large carton of yogurt.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Lots. It isn't a good idea to let them stay broody if you aren't hatching eggs.

A friend of mine didn't intervene and let her turkey stay broody. It died after $2000 of vet bills, daily physical therapy and injections.

You can make a broody cage out of some woven wire fencing and a few short boards. It only takes a couple days if you start early.

 

[ronott1]

Anyone have any experience with broodies? We don't have the coop space capacity to add new members to our flock, and I don't have a suitable broody breaker cage at the moment. What if I just let our little Veera sit on her imaginary eggs, will she give up eventually without me intervening? Or is she going to sit on the nest and exhaust herself completely?

give her a week and then move her to a wire bottomed cage.

You can also borrow a couple of day old chicks and let her have them for two days then give them back or sell them if you bought them. The Hen will stop being broody by then and then forget about the chicks soon after you remove them.

Sometimes the formerly broody hen will molt.

 

[chickadoodles]

Anyone have any experience with broodies? We don't have the coop space capacity to add new members to our flock, and I don't have a suitable broody breaker cage at the moment. What if I just let our little Veera sit on her imaginary eggs, will she give up eventually without me intervening? Or is she going to sit on the nest and exhaust herself completely?

I've only had one broody and she stayed in the empty nest for two weeks till I bought some turkey eggs from Arielle for her to hatch for me. I think she would still be sitting there waiting other wise.

 

[vehve]

Yeah, the wait a week approach was sort of what I had in mind. She tried this a couple weeks earlier too, but then she stopped by herself. We should be getting some colder weather soon too, so that might help as well.

I wouldn't want to build the cage myself, since the only smart place to put it would be the ceiling of the run, and I don't know if I'd trust it to hold. Maybe I need to haul the smaller dog crate from the cottage or something.

I've tried taking her out of the nest a couple times, she can stay with the flock for even half an hour, but then she goes back. She seems to have an internal clock that says when she's supposed to go lay an egg, but the time of the actual laying gets later every day during her stretch, so she ends up spending longer and longer times in there which seems to induce this, at least that's how it went close to the end of her previous two weeks of laying every day. Now she did it for two weeks again and started spending a longer time in the nest towards the last couple days, and hasn't laid in two days.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

We used to keep flocks of about 100 leghorns and we had about 5 cages hanging from the ceiling of the henhouse. Seems like there was always one or two birds in there.

I've resorted to ice in the nest and blocking them off from the nests but as long as they can sit down and keep their underside warm the hormonal urge to start a family will continue to rage.

The sooner you can break them by getting air under them the quicker they break. If you start the second day they're done in about 30 hours.

I have a cage that's elevated with an area for a droppings tray in the bottom. It's just big enough for a bird food and water.

I think I'll build one of the old style to hang from the ceiling of the larger coop cause sometimes I need to break more than one.

I usually let mature hens hatch eggs but first time setters, I break since they don't always make the best mothers.

 

[vehve]

Quote: Borrowing the chicks would be a good way too. Only problem is, that I don't think people are hatching too much this time of the year anymore, or willing to risk the biosecurity issues that would come along with that. You can't just walk into some store and buy chicks around here. One idea would be to see if someone wants some olive eggers and is willing to commit to taking them, but I'm not sure how I feel about hatching chicks with winter on the way. In a month or two, a whole lot of "Oh poop, what are we going to do with our summer hens" chickens will be searching for homes anyway. That's actually something I might think about next summer. Hatching a few chicks, renting them to people for the summer, and then processing them in the fall. People are actually willing to pay for the opportunity of keeping and feeding your birds through the summer. Not too bad.

 

[vehve]

We used to keep flocks of about 100 leghorns and we had about 5 cages hanging from the ceiling of the henhouse. Seems like there was always one or two birds in there.

I've resorted to ice in the nest and blocking them off from the nests but as long as they can sit down and keep their underside warm the hormonal urge to start a family will continue to rage.

The sooner you can break them by getting air under them the quicker they break. If you start the second day they're done in about 30 hours.

I have a cage that's elevated with an area for a droppings tray in the bottom. It's just big enough for a bird food and water.

I think I'll build one of the old style to hang from the ceiling of the larger coop cause sometimes I need to break more than one.

I usually let mature hens hatch eggs but first time setters, I break since they don't always make the best mothers.

Any thoughts about putting icepacks under the nests? That might be a quick and easy fix... Or then I'll give her a cold.

*Edit* I meant, what was your experience with the ice packs? Any chance it might work and did you discover a downside to them?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I've done ice and it seemed to help but works better if you have plastic nesting material. It is more labor intensive than the cage.