Carmel Hillbillies: The One About the Broody Hens

For the past 6 weeks I have learned quite a bit about broody hens.
A lot of this has been a "wait & see" approach. Now that I know what I know, should this happen again, I feel 1,000 times more confident and equipped to deal with broody hens!!

I will begin this blog with what I will do next time!
Then I will share about what this first time, learning experience has been!!

Should a hen of mine become broody again, I would:
1. Wait a couple of days to be sure, then move the hen and her eggs, (in the evening), to a separate location with her own water & food.
2. Mark my calendar for 21 days from when the hen starting sitting so that I can start to expect chicks at this time.
3. Closely observe the broody hen. If she abandons her eggs, just throw them out & return her to the coop. Check even more often when the 21 days are up to make sure that she will not kill them, to make sure a chick doesn't need help, etc.
4. Discard any eggs that don't hatch.

Conclusion: Letting broody hens hatch their own chicks & raise them is a great and natural way to increase your flock.

A little background-
Let me begin by saying that I have never been what you would call an "animal person."
This may be hard to believe since:
~I grew up with animals: dog, cats, bunnies & chickens
~My grandfather was a farmer with dairy cows, chickens, a horse & sometimes pigs, etc.
~I grew up literally in a lot in a pasture, surrounded by cows
~We have a rabbit, 2 guinea pigs, a dog, 2 ducks, a goat & (now) 15 hens, a rooster & 3 chicks

However, I have just never been able to summon heartwarming feeling for animals! When we got our dog, as a puppy, of course it was cute & I tried to love it, but found that I just don't have it in me!!
Don't judge!! ;)
However, I really do like farm animals! I think it's because they can provide something useful to me. I have, over time, learned to like animals more & I certainly think almost any baby animal is cute. I think I had a turning point when my goat, Clara, almost died & I worked really hard to keep her alive. I do love Clara, but so far she is the only animal I would say that I actually love.

So- picture me, sort-of a non-animal person. I had no more in common with Horse People in high school than I would have had with a Purple People Eater. (I did not actually label them horse people, but now that I think about it, I guess that's how I would have described people who were really "into" animals, I guess because they always seemed to have horses.) I once heard a woman, who grew up on a farm, say that her brother used to refer to her as an "indoor cat." I don't know if I would go that far in describing my former self, but I would say that even though I was surrounded by farmers & animals, I was pretty clueless about them!! (I still am... but I am learning!)

SO... as mentioned in the first post on this blog, when I first got chickens I actually purchased laying hens, because I didn't want to or know how to deal with baby chicks and heating lamps and all that.

I obviously got over that because we incubated our own eggs in 2011 & in 2012 & it was just an amazing experience for us.

However, this year we decided not to incubate eggs. The biggest reason for this was because from the time the chicks are about 3-4 weeks to 4 months or so, they are kind-of a big pain!! You can't put the little ones in the coop with the adults, so they require a separate place & chickens make such a mess. Plus, we always go camping for Memorial Day weekend, which is when I have eggs in the incubator & I didn't want to deal with driving home & turning the eggs this year.
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When you are around an animal for awhile, you will notice when something is different. I certainly was not expecting or looking for a broody hen. In fact, I had been told that broodiness has been "bred out of" most chickens. I had done exactly zero reading about broody hens. I have a great chicken book, (on long-term loan from my aunt), Raising Poultry the Modern Way by Leonard Mercia, however I recently lent it to a lady at church who is getting chickens for the first time, so I didn't have that as a resource to refer to.

As timing would have it, I observed what I was guessing was a broody hen, just a few days before we were to leave on a family vacation! Then- 2 broody hens. Not knowing for sure & not having the time to learn much, I instructed my "chicken sitters" to just leave those 2 hens alone & not collect eggs under them. We left for 8 days, came back and they were still sitting. Very exciting!

My first several internet searches about broody hens all resulted in how to break a hen from its broodiness. This is not what I wanted to do! It took a little bit of digging for me to find some helpful material on exactly what to do.

Now I feel that I can spot a broody immediately. A broody will leave her nesting area for only a few minutes a day, to eat and drink a little & make a smellier-than-normal poop. My broodies lost weight over the several weeks of sitting, as they ate less than usual. A broody will flatten out and have an increased body temperature.

If you come near her she will puff up and squawk at you. She may pull out some breast feathers so she can be closer to the eggs & provide more warmth. A few of mine did this. She can be observed checking her eggs and rolling them with her beak. The breeds most common for broodiness are Bantams, Silkies & Cochins, none of which I have! It is interesting to note that I have 15 hens. 6 of my hens are purebreds from Blue Seal last year, because I wanted to introduce purebreds back into my very mixed-up flock. 5 of my chickens became broody this summer and they were all my mixed breeds.

When a broody hen is ready to sit on her clutch of eggs, she releases the hormone, prolactin. This temporarily stops egg production. However, it should be added that a hen may go broody even if their isn't a rooster, (in other words, those eggs are never going to hatch!), on plastic eggs or no eggs. There is no guarantee that once a hen has gone broody it will stay broody. It may sit for 18 days and leave the eggs. This is why we took a wait and see approach this year, having never experienced this before & not knowing exactly what to expect.

So.. I have returned home from my vacation, a few days later I have 4 broody hens. I have since learned that a hen can go broody just by the sight of another broody hen. Some people even put curtains on their nesting boxes so that this doesn't happen!

My 5th hen goes broody. Things are getting out of control!

By this time I have read that it is best to move the broodies nearer to the ground. It's also best to move them in the early morning or evening. As broody hens they are sort-of in a trance-like state & somewhat dazed, although very defensive of their eggs. It would have been far better to move them much earlier in the broodiness process, but that's just not the way it happened for us this time.

We decided to move the two original broodies. (Seen here in the cage.)
I was pretty much a wreck the night we moved them. One did have a broken egg so it was good to get that goo off her & the rest of the eggs. I candled all the eggs & only returned those that were fertile. I would later wish that I had paid more attention to the stage of development and noted it, so I would know what to expect in whether or not the eggs should hatch close together in time. The hens did not like being moved and at first would't sit on the eggs. I ended up locking them in the dog cage & pushing them back toward the eggs, sort-of forcing them to sit on them. I was very unsure about the viability of the eggs due to the hens taking some time to lay on them. All I could do was wait...

In the morning I found that they were sitting, and another broody had joined them and started sitting on the coop floor next to the cage, usually with her head in! She was not sitting on any eggs, but I just let her sit there.

As timing would have it, (again!), I left home for a planned hike. I could have been gone for 12 days, which would mean I would miss the hatch, if it even happened. However, I ended up being gone for only 3 days. I had instructed my family what I thought we should do if and when chicks hatched. Also, right before I left, one of the caged hens seemed to be getting restless. I suggested to my daughter that she let that hen out if it seemed like it wanted out.

She did end up doing this, so when I returned from hiking I had one hen left in my box. She was not, however, sitting on all the eggs. This is the hen I had marked my calendar by & I just had no idea what was going on with the others. My intention was to let them be broody and see how it all worked out, but to focus my attention on Bald Mommy, as she came to be known.

My well-meaning husband, however, collected ALL the eggs from the other broodies, while I was gone on my 3 day hike. So returning from my hike, with less than a week from my expected hatch, I had 1 broody hen in the cage, on fertile eggs. I had one broody on the coop floor, on no eggs. I had 2 broodies in nesting boxes, on no eggs. (At the time.)

I found my 5th broody hen in a separate place, sitting on 5 eggs. She was actually in a place that is connected to our chicken coop & used to be a goat box. I think she was one of the first two original broody hens, the one who my daughter let out of the cage. I can't be sure though! I don't know my chickens that well!!

Hatch Day came and I checked the chickens very, very frequently. Sure enough - an empty shell & a CHICK!! SO exciting!! I had read that some chickens will immediately kill the chick and there is no way to know what will happen until you wait and see. Some suggest immediately taking the chick so that you know it will be safe.

I was quite panicky about this hatching. What to do? What to do? I immediately put all the other chickens and the rooster out of the coop, and kept them out for 2 days while I observed!! I probably would have just taken the chick, but my husband reminded me that we hadn't planned on having chicks this year. We were not going to "rescue" any chicks or any eggs to the incubator and "finish" the process.

The chick was going back & forth, through the cage, between Bald Mommy & Barred Rock Mommy & both mommies were doing a very good job of taking care of it.

It is really quite something to see the chick go under the mommy's wing when it needs heat. So very different from getting baby chicks in a box & putting them under the heat lamp! I also observed Barred Rock Mommy repeatedly try to steal Bald Mommy's eggs!! It was also quite something! However, because of the cage she could not get an egg. She sometimes lifted them up as high as an inch off the floor and I was worried she would break them. But she didn't!

I knew that I needed to move the mom & the chick & I decided to move them to the old goat box, where another broody already was. My rooster & my other chickens needed to get back to the coop.

So we moved the eggs and Bald Mommy & Barred Rock Mommy & baby chick #1. I observed closely to make sure that Corner Mommy wasn't the type that would kill the chick. She seemed to handle her new roomies okay, so the move was a success. (As stated in the beginning, if this happens again I would immediately move them in here.)

Chick #2 hatched a couple of days later.

Bald Mommy isn't very pretty right now, but she is a good mommy.

Chick #3 hatches.

Meanwhile, there are still 2 broody hens in nesting boxes in the coop.
I do, however, draw the line at my rooster being broody!!!

(Never in his life has he gotten in one of those boxes!! Silly bird!)

A day or two later another chick hatched. This time, though, neither Barred Rock Mommy nor Bald Mommy were taking care of it. Twice we tried putting it under their wings but we ended up finding it, dead. 3 chicks had hatched, which was exciting, but there had been about a dozen eggs. Some were getting buried in the bedding. I wonder if some were getting eaten. Barred Rock Mommy & Bald Mommy were getting kind-of restless. After all, Bald Mommy had now been nearly still for 4 weeks. Also, chickens need a certain amount of square feet per chicken. We decided to remove Barred Rock Mommy from the goat box. She didn't like it very much!

There are a lot of ideas online about how to get the broodiness out of a hen, most include using ice water to cool down her temperature. We decided to put Barred Rock Mommy outside the coop.

She got back in and sat right by where the door was for the goat box.

A few days later, Bald Mommy seemed more and more restless. So, we did the same to her.

She also sat by the door opening. Sometimes they lay right on top of each other & they are both still sleeping there each night, but going about their normal business during the day.

I have been waiting for Corner Mommy to hatch her eggs. I am not exactly sure about when she started her clutch. However, I do not think they are going to hatch. My guess is that with the 3 chicks in there with her, she is busy taking care of them and there has just been two long of a time gap between the chicks hatching and her eggs hatching. More & more when I observe her, she is getting off her eggs. If nothing happens in the next couple of days I am going to remove them. She is doing a lovely job, however, with the 3 chicks.

As for my 2 remaining broodies, as much as I wanted to wait and see, a couple of things were happening:

1. Even though we have 9 nesting boxes, sometimes a laying hen would fly into one of the two boxes with a broody in it. Here the hen would lay her egg and that egg would get all mixed in with whatever the broody was laying on.

I really want my hens to be productive and with 5 of them broody & not laying I just can't be losing eggs in this way. Well over a month has passed with lowered productivity.

2. I think that one of my nesting broodies started to kill her chicks as they hatched. I can't be sure that any hatched. Maybe she just started eating her eggs. But by the looks of the eggshells I saw in her box with her, it really seems like a couple hatched and are now gone. I waited a couple of days after this happened because when the chicks are very new they mostly stay under their moms and it is hard to spot them. However, once I could be sure that there weren't any chicks there, I surmised that this broody hen was not going to be a good mom.

So, yesterday we put these 2 broody hens out of the coop. We collected 24 eggs in their boxes and discarded them.

So, there you have it. My first experience with broody hens. 3 chicks is not a very big number, considering that I had 5 broody hens, but with out vacation & my hike & eggs being collected & me not having a clue, overall I am pleased with the outcome!