Let’s talk about your broody hens! We currently have two broody hens at our homestead. Are you familiar with the term broody hen? A broody hen is a hen who sits on her eggs (and sometimes other hens’ eggs) all day and night. She may get up one time to eat, drink, and poop. She will fluff her feathers, growl, and sometimes peck at you. It happens several times a year at our house. Usually in the Spring and Summer. I’m going to share with you six ways to deal with a broody hen.
A hen can become broody even if there is no rooster in the flock! So, of course, the eggs will not hatch if there is no rooster. Obviously, you don’t want her to continue to sit on eggs that will never hatch.
Why do you want to break a hen from being broody?
When a hen is broody, they stop laying eggs. This is one reason you may want to break them out of their broody state.
Since a hen can suffer some health consequences from sitting on eggs for days on end, you may choose to break her from her broodiness. We’ve had a hen sit on eggs for nearly two months!
You may end up with several roosters if she hatches her eggs.
If it’s winter, it may not be the best time for her to hatch eggs. We’ve lost some chicks when a cold front came in during Spring.
What to do with a Broody Hen if there is no rooster
If there is not a rooster to fertilize the egg you are likely wanting to stop her from being broody. While she is sitting on the unfertilized eggs, your egg production is dropping!
Six Ways to Deal with a Broody Hen
Here are a few things you can try to stop your hen from being broody if you have a rooster or don’t have a rooster.
1. Remove the Broody Hen from her nest.
This is the first thing I try because it is so simple. Of course, simple doesn’t mean it always works. But I encourage you to give it a try! It also works better if you catch her in the first few days of her brooding. Simply remove her from the nest. You may also need to do this for several days in a row for it to take effect.
2. Block off the nesting boxes.
I have never tried this one but it has worked for others. Simply block access to the nesting boxes or remove the nesting boxes from the coop. Though this may also cause your other hens to lay their eggs where you can’t find them.
3. Clear out their nesting boxes
Remove all the soft bedding from their nesting boxes. If they do not have a soft place to lay they will likely snap out of their broodiness. Once again, you may have issues with your other hens hiding their eggs.
4. Broody Breaker/Chicken Jail
We have done this one time with a chicken and it worked for us. We call ours the chicken nursery. It is a separate smaller coop that sets in our chicken run. It was our very first coop and it’s where we usually move new babies and new mommas with babies.
We were actually attempting to set up a broody hen with her eggs in the coop but it backfired and broke her from being broody. So, moving eggs and momma can be hit or miss. It was a miss on this attempt. In an attempt to break her broodiness, we would have moved the hen only and set her up in “chicken jail” for a day or two and hopefully break her.
5. Let Her Hatch Her Eggs
If you want to add to the flock and aren’t worried about your broody hen hatching a few roosters, let her sit on and hatch her eggs. It will take her 21 days to hatch her eggs. You can leave her where she is or move or to a place on her own. We have the “nursery coop” to move all of our hens and their new babies. As stated above, moving her may cause her to no longer be broody. So, just be aware of that if you decide to move the broody hen and her eggs.
6. Buy Baby Chicks at a Hatchery or a Feed Store
This is almost the best way to do it because you get to pick the breed of chicks and the sex. The chicks need to be no more than 2 days old. We’ve tried this with two of our broody hens. It worked on one but not the other. The main difference is the one it worked with had hatched her own eggs earlier that year. The other was older and had never hatched eggs.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope this article, 6 Ways to Deal With a Broody Hen, was helpful. They can be angry and a pain in the butt but eventually you can get them back to normal and non-broody.
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