How to handle a broody hen
Spring has sprung at Riverbank Vineyard and the warmer temperatures have awakened some basic instincts in our flock – one of our hens has gone broody!
Trouble in the hen house
Day in, day out, Miss Marg (or is it Lucille?…we can never tell two of the grey ones, named after Bart’s twin aunts, apart) stays firmly put in her nesting box, diligently keeping the eggs warm. Normally a very sweet little hen, she now growls at me when I remove the eggs out from under her each day and won’t budge when other hens try to come into the nesting box to lay their eggs.
As an aside, you would think that with four nesting boxes and eight hens, space wouldn’t be an issue but sadly, Bart only built one ‘best box’. (All of the nesting boxes are identical, but the hens love the one in the corner closest to the water best). They will not lay in any of the other three boxes. There are fights. There are lineups. Eggs have dropped while patient chickens remain in the queue for the best box. The less patient chickens just shoulder their way in and lay on top of whatever chicken is in there. It’s chaos. And Marg (Lucille?) is hogging the best box. All day. Every day.
The dilemma
Now, if we had a rooster, these eggs would be fertilised and I’d be tempted to let her hatch a brood. But. We don’t have a rooster anymore (ours had the mind of a serial killer…it’s a story for another day), and even if we did, it’s still too cold outside for chicks to survive. And Bart gets grumpy when I turn our spare bedroom into a chick nursery.
So Marg is going to a lot of trouble for naught. When hens are brooding, they don’t lay eggs. They hardly eat and drink. They pull out their breast feathers to line the nest. And in doing so they weaken themselves and become more susceptible to sickness and pests like mites.
This is why most modern layers have had the broody gene bred out of them, but certain heritage breeds still have it running strong. So I think it’s quaint and natural and I’m hesitant to be too heavy handed about it.
However, for all the reasons mentioned above, my anxiety levels spiked when I realised what was happening. What if she gets sick? Infested with mites? Depressed? What if it NEVER PASSES?
The range of solutions for broody hens
I read many articles. I reached out to many seasoned chicken owners. Each had their own views and approaches on how to handle broody hens. Solutions ranged from cool water dunks to isolation in a raised wire cage – both approaches aiming to lower the body heat of their hens so they’d ‘snap out of it’.
My favourite advice, from the kindest chicken owner I know, was this: “Every day I gently remove my broody hens from their nests. I put them by the water so they’re encouraged to drink, then they wander off to eat a little bit. While they’re eating, I collect all of the eggs so that they have nothing to hop back onto when they return to the nest. It eventually works, but it can take a couple of weeks. I had one that was broody for a month once, and resorted to putting ice packs into the nest to discourage her from hopping in.”
Executing the advice
Kindness with a dose of ice-packs: I lovingly and patiently tried the gentle approach first. And I felt very good about myself for it. But sadly, after a few weeks of gently removing her from her nest each day, I noticed no change in behaviour, so I moved on to phase two: ice packs. And after a few days of that, I learned Marg has quite a high tolerance for sitting on ice packs. She just settles in ‘as per’ until they melt and doesn’t so much as ruffle a feather about it.
It was time to pull out the big guns. Albeit half-heartedly.
Isolation: Marg spent a few unhappy hours in isolation in the run under the coop, scowling at me everytime I walked by. Unable to endure not being liked by anyone, including my darling hens, I let her out about 22-hours short of her 24-hour isolation (which tracks with my overall parenting style). I was hopeful that would have done the trick, but she just scurried right back to her best nest box and wedged herself under the other hen who had been trying to lay her egg in peace.
Cool water bath: This one went about as well as you can imagine. After about five minutes of trying to settle her into my laundry room sink filled with cool water, I was soaked through to my undies and Marg was still mostly dry. Word to the wise – chickens are surprisingly strong and wiley when motivated. And they don’t enjoy cool water baths. Even on sunny days. I think she got a good two minutes in there though (again about 58-minutes short of the recommended amount of time), but I was hopeful it would do the trick.
It did not. And then I gave up.
Tread lightly
I’m a big proponent of being kind to yourself. Your instincts, intuition, moods, cycles, ebbs and flows. So who am I to break that in another creature? Letting go of my quest to break her of her broodiness felt good. And that feeling reminded me of a quote from Aldous Huxley:
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…to throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…”
– Aldous Huxley, Island
Having experienced some degree of broodiness of my own in my early thirties, I can tell you with certainty I would not have reacted well to any such efforts to snap me out of it. Broody hens want one thing and one thing only: chicks.
In the end, I coaxed my anxieties down and decided to tread lightly. It’s my hope that this cycle passes naturally within a few weeks. If she goes broody again later in the spring, or if I get more broody hens…I’ve got a new plan that may or may not involve borrowing some fertilized eggs from a fellow chicken owner and having one of my broody Mamas hatch some adopted baby chicks. Could there be anything more celebratory of spring than baby chicks? I think not.
(I beg of you, DO NOT tell Bart about this plan. This is a test to see if he reads my blog. And also he will say no.)
About the author
Jessica Johnson runs a small, traditional Bed and Breakfast from a vineyard in the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia, Canada.
Raised to be a strong, independent career woman but now a vigneron’s wife and stay-at-home mom on a fledgling homestead, she is clumsily yet happily establishing roots in her new landscape.
An expert at almost nothing but curious about nearly everything, Jessica writes about her adventures in rural B.C. where she raises her son and other wild creatures and is learning the old ways to preserve and grow food.
