Breaking a broody chicken

Well, we have managed it.  White is no longer sitting in the hen house looking like a rather classy tea cosy, she is up and about, making a lot of noise and back laying eggs.

In a previous post I described how White had gone broody, and having been full of good advice for friends in the same situation, we were now facing it ourselves.

Firstly I should point out that we never had this problem with the beige battery hybrids that we used to buy, but then White, Black and Spot were purchased with the idea of not having to replace a worn out hen every 18 months.  It seems that Light Sussex are inclined to have a brood from time to time, being a somewhat more natural bird.

At first we did ask around to see if anyone needed any eggs hatching or if there was any wisdom among the local peasantry.  Either I expressed it badly or the local farm chickens know that if you sit still too long, you are for the pot, but no one had any advice and nor did anyone need any eggs hatching.

Plan B was to make sitting uncomfortable.  For about 10 days we had White happily trying to hatch cool blocks from the freezer.  As it was the hottest it has been this year so far when we tried that, she seemed to rather enjoy it, so eventually we gave that up.

Plan C was rather less cunning.  Once Spot and Black had had their chance to lay their eggs, and for those eggs to be stolen by White for hatching, we would lift White out of the hen house, deposit her in an open bit of the run and close up the hen house until the evening.  This lead to some awful noises as she tried to burrow back into the hen house, or stood on top of it, trying to see in through a gap by the roof hinge, and to White falling off the hen house quite frequently as she is not very acrobatic.  She also made a few spare nests around the chicken run, but these either got rained on, trashed by the other two when she wasn't looking or dug up by us to help in the search for worms. 

After about 5 days of this, White gave in gracefully and has resumed normal chicken life.  Indeed after about 6 days, she even started laying again, which was a surprise to us as we thought she would take longer to get back in the swing of things.  What may have helped was that she didn't lose condition at all while she was brooding, apart from the fact that her comb went pale.  Anyway, it is nice to have her up and about again.

Comments

[Chelsea]

How do you stop a Hen from being Broody. dats all i wanna know!

[Jane]

Well, Chelsea, you can see from later posts that there is no easy method of stopping them once they start. The best advice I can give is to buy ISA Brown chickens as they seem to have had the urge to brood bred out of them. With the prettier varieties, it seems to be a risk you take that some will have an urge to brood, and while there are tips that may work with some birds, none seem to be fool proof to me. There also doesn't seem to be any sign that they are about to go broody either - or not that I have had time to observe and test.

[Christine]

I did have some success with snapping a broody hen out of her meditations! I had chinese silkies and about once a month they would get broodie. If I caught it straight away and put them (on their own) into a dark cardboard box for 24 hours (with water) then that would usually snap them out of it. They didn't seem to be any the worse off for their experience.

[jacquie]

i have a broody hen, and she seems to off had night time meeting with my other 5 and know only 1 lays.My cock on the other hand is as always hooney.Tried a few things but please someone help my sanity !!!!!

[D & M]

1 of our sussex has become very broody, she comes out first thing to eat and drink then sits all day in the coope. none of our hens have laid for days and if we remove her she becomes very distressed and noisey! we have decided on this occassion to purchase a couple of fertile eggs. This will not be a regular thing if she gets like this again we will try another aproach, possibly buy ear plugs :)