Your hen doesn’t ever seem to leave the box. She’s started getting mean at you! She pecks at you, and puffs out her feathers when you come near her, growls if you even look at her. If you manage to find her off the nest, or throw her out, she’s lining the nest with her own feathers. She’s gone broody!
A broody hen can be a blessing. Of course, if you’re trying to hatch chicks, a mother bird takes care of a lot of work. You can even sneak different eggs under her and get her to hatch them. Its all a very rewarding process to experience. Or… A broody hen can be a curse. Theres really no point if you don’t have fertilized eggs, or time to raise more birds, or space. A broody hen undergoes hormonal changes. She eats less, goes to the bathroom less, starts to lose weight; once she has enough eggs, she stops laying. Worse, broodiness is contagious. Once the hormones start changing, other hens will start to go broody. (Another good reason to isolate a broody hen). Fantastic if you want a lot of chicks. Not good if you like having eggs. Eventually A hen will go out of brood on her own, but this can take some time, and is very taxing on the bird as she tries in vain to hatch out eggs that are either sterile, or sometimes do not even exist!
Opinions vary on the soundness of breaking the brood. Some people say that broodiness is a natural process that should be allowed to play out. That it is a hormone cycle that should not be interfered with.
In my opinion, this position is overstated. Consider the natural environment. In all probability, the natural hen would have consistent exposure (ahem) to mates. Anyone who has seen a feral chicken population can tell you this. As such, the hens normal cycle would be a successful hatch. Not a vain, unduly drawn out, futile attempt to hatch eggs. I have seen hens try over and over again, and it isn’t good for them. A fertile clutch leads to a short brood. Much shorter than a hen spends trying to hatch useless eggs. I weigh the disturbance of “too much brood” vs the disturbance of breaking and find myself in favor of breaking, for the benefit of both my hen and myself.. But, your call.
If you want to break your hens broodiness, there are some basic principles you need to understand. A hen wants to brood in a dark, isolated, warm, soft place away from other birds. The best way to break the brood is to never let it start. Avoid producing these areas….particularly in places that you don’t check where a hen can “get away with it” for too long before you stop it.
Broodiness as a hormone cycle, becomes entrenched the longer it is allowed to continue. A hen will fight to stay on a nest she’s already put a lot of time into much harder than a new one. So, act decisively. As soon as you notice a hen is broody, begin removing all the eggs from the hen, and the hen house generally as soon as possible. There should be no eggs “sitting around” encouraging the broody hen. Take the hen to the far end of the yard, distract her with treats, and leave her outside. Some people suggest walking around with the hen for a bit. The idea is “the longer off the nest, the more she forgets about it”.
If you can lock your hen out of the house all day, and at night place her on a perch, you should. She won’t relocate into the box at night, though you might find her there in the morning, where you will remove her as soon as possible again to the yard.
In my experience, persistence in this regard causes most broody hens to give it up and go back to being one of the girls. Birds are very sensitive to the idea that their nest is uncompromised- from a security point of view, and if you keep taking the eggs, and kicking them off the nest, especially if you do it several times a day, they get discouraged and give up….or go looking for a better hiding place. Watch for that. Some hens mean serious biznass when they get broody though, and you might have to move on to “Special Operations” to break the brood.
Happiness is a warm vent- The body of a hen goes up as it literally transforms itself into an incubator. Warmth is an indication that all is well in the nest. The hen uses her vent to keep track of the temperature. Don’t laugh, Cadillacs have heated seats for a reason. You can use this knowledge of hen thinking to your advantage.
What do you think a hen doesn’t want to sit on? How about a frozen water bottle? Remember, she’s removing her feathers underneath to press her skin directly against the eggs. I haven’t tried this idea personally, but I’m assured it works. If you need time to think about it, I suggest thinking about it with a frozen bottle of water clamped between your naked thighs. I would use this in combination with removing the hen. Let her come back to an eggless nest and a frozen water bottle to sit on! Some people recommend cooling your hen down with frequent baths. Some suggest this might be too stressful. I think it probably depends on your relationship with your birds.
If you don’t want to mess with this, a simple solution is to just deny the nesting space. I would literally brick in the nest boxes. Just stack a few bricks in the middle of the box, bird can’t get in, done. Don’t worry about there being adjacent boxes, broody hens are remarkably particular, most of the time, they don’t set up shop again. In almost all of my broody cases removal of eggs, removal of bird, and failing that, blocking the nest ended the broody behavior….almost all of them.
So some of you are thinking “Oh I so don’t have time to police my chickens like that” or you’re thinking “I have 300 chickens, I’d be doing that all day!” Well for you folks, and for the hen that persists through all the above, there is another solution…solitary. Thats right… Chicken jail.
You will want a small, exposed, well sunned cage. The sun is important, broody likes dark. Exposed is important. Nesting is a very vulnerable time. The hen likes to feel cloistered and protected. We want the opposite experience… while still being safe. Watch for too much sun, and of course only leave this cage in a safe environment. Ideally outside, off the ground, either hanging or on bricks, of course with food and water, but..critically… no nesting, padding, etc. The exposure to a reasonable amount of sun, and breeze is important. The breeze tells the bird its too cold, and she’s too exposed to be broody, and the sun tells her she’s not secluded enough. Try this for just a couple days, and keep an eye out. If she goes broody again, back to chicken jail! And of course, keep eggs out of there!
So there are several strategies for breaking the brood. I want to encourage the reader though to think of ways to allow “nature to take its course”. Breaking a broody hen can be a necessary but frustrating (for all parties) experience. In my opinion, hens like hatching and rearing chicks, and its a fantastic experience to behold, especially for children, and I always found any excuse I could to let my hens do what hens do. And really, as I see it, a broody hen is a blessing, and an easy way to make money with chickens.
That said, life has a way of making unchecked livestock reproduction difficult, and as a chicken raiser, it is highly likely that at some point you will want to break a broody hen. Usually the most basic efforts as mentioned at the beginning are effective, but sometimes persistence and more drastic measures are called for. I think the reader will find with this writing as a guide, that solving the problem is typically a very manageable, and low-stress incident.
Above all remember, being broody is encouraged by environmental factors. A hen generally has basic requirements from her environment before she commits to brood. Breaking the brood is as simple as understanding these requirements and categorically denying them.