Broody hen vs. a hen who wants to lay eggs.
I am so frustrated right now I have three broody hens. What this means is I have 3 hens who think they should be hatching out eggs rather than laying them. They want to spend almost every hour of the day sitting in the nest box, trying to hatch out eggs that exist only in their mind. Preventing the chickens who want to lay eggs from getting in the nest box to produce.
The easy way to solve this problem is to put them in a dog crate on sawhorses for 3-5 days to break the spell. Right now we have some exterior forces pulling at our household so the dog crate solution is NOT going to come to fruition anytime soon. (The one extra dog crate we have for this purpose is stored up in some hinder regions of the garage attic, that only the males of this household can get to). In the meantime every day, I pull the broody girls out of the nest boxes each morning and put them in a covered puppy exercise pen so the girls who want to lay eggs for our family can get to the boxes. It won’t break the spell like a elevated dog crate would, but if I don’t do this they refuse to give up the nest boxes, causing all sorts of problems. Problems are not good.
We had planned to butcher our extra roosters this weekend, which is now up in the air due the possibility that Mr. Ranger Sir won’t be here to help. Lucky for the broody b&%$(‘s because at this minute I would gladly send them with the boys to freezer camp. Like roosters they are not laying any eggs and good enough reason for me to call it enough.
Looking Out the Window 
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. One woman’s pain in the butt broody hen is another woman’s dream come true. It is quite ironic that you all have broody hens driving you crazy while I am purposefully buying Silkie chicks that I have no use for and don’t even want except for the chance that they have a higher chance of going broody for me. I SO wish one of you lived in Colorado, I would gladly trade you out some of my never-go-broody hens for your broodies. 🙂
I wish I could hand them off to you. It would be great to know they were serving a good purpose. At this point their purpose is going to likely be a a dinner.
We have nonstop broody hens here. Drives me nuts. I pulled a couple out for a few days and put them in a chicken tractor. I let the one that kept pecking me when I pulled her off the eggs loose and she disappeared the next night. I know horrible – but she pissed me off. I have two new broody hens and pulled them out yesterday. It seems to be a plague this year. Why does the elevated dog crate work better than just separating them? My hens don’t seem to lay for quite awhile after they’ve gone broody – do you have the same experience?
The theory is elevated dog crate with the the open mesh floor works because it “cools them off” They can’t keep their area where they will keep the eggs warm. It has always worked well and snaps the broody spell in 3 or 4 days. A broody spell is supposed to last about 21 days the same amount of time it takes eggs to incubate.
I hate to laugh but this is something all to common. It takes forever after breaking the broody spell for the damn hens to lay eggs again… Grr! I have had five broody hens in a few weeks span and they don’t even have a rooster with them!
One at a time I can deal with, but three is pushing me over the bend. I can’t imagine 5. Well it’s time to get out there and free up the nests for the girls who want to lay eggs.