Going broody

Elinor is broody and it is not a pretty sight.  She is puffed up to twice her normal size and hunkered down in her nesting box like Jabba the Hut with feathers.  She is cranky and aggressive and if you try to touch her she'll make a noise like grinding gears.  It's scary.

Elinor wants to be a mother.  More specifically, she wants to sit on a clutch of eggs until they hatch.   She has stopped laying eggs and is going to sit on whatever is under her for about 21 days.   It is a natural chicken condition caused by a surge of prolactin, the same hormone associated with PMS in women.  Some breeds are more prone to broodiness than others.  The mood to brood has pretty much been selected out of hybrids used for commercial egg production, but is common in more traditional varieties.  Elinor is a cross between a Welsummer and a New Hampshire.  (We got her and five sisters from a local farmer trying to recreate a line of Bielefelders. Our girls were the rejects that she did not want to continue breeding.  But they are beautiful and excellent layers.)  Welsummers are not known for going broody, but New Hampshires are.

If you want to raise chickens from eggs you might be delighted to have a broody hen or two as an alternative to the incubator.  It can be significantly less trouble, since you don't have to monitor temperature and humidity or turn your eggs over three times a day -- your hen takes care of all that.

Craig and I do not want to hatch chicks from eggs.  If we did about half of them would turn out to be male, and there aren't many things you can do with a rooster.  You can eat it, or sell it to someone else to eat.  You might keep one to keep watch over your hens, which has its pros and cons.  He will be always on the alert for predators and may be positively heroic protecting his flock.  But he will also try to mate with them constantly, and may hurt the hens or even denude their backs with his frequent attentions.  Contrary to what some people think, hens will lay perfectly fine eggs without roosters, thank you very much.  But the eggs won't be fertilized, which is a plus if you don't like to eat fertilized eggs and don't plan to hatch them.

Big Red

We actually have one rooster, Big Red.  He's a Rhode Island Red from our first-ever flock of chickens, a mistake but one we're overall happy we made.  A gorgeous animal, he does his jobs well.  We had to get an "apron," kind of a back-protector, for Sweetie, who was rubbed raw from his advances.  But on the whole he isn't too rough on the girls and they can out-run him if they care to.

But I digress. Big Red is all the rooster we need, so hatching chicks from eggs is ill-advised, and we have no use for a broody hen.  It isn't great for the hen, who will only leave the nest once or twice a day to eat and drink and poop.  She'll lose weight and start looking really ratty.  Also, she's taking up a nesting box full time, to the annoyance of the others.   Broodiness seems to be catching, and one broody hen can throw off egg production for the whole flock.  Since Elinor went broody, our daily egg production went from five or six to one or two.

Most advice says the best way to break a broody hen is to put her in an elevated wire cage with no nesting box until she lays an egg.  Then let her out, give her some tasty scratch, and hope she doesn't hunker down on the nest again.  If she does, put her back in for a second round.  We have a dog crate with an extra wire rack on the floor we can use for the purpose.  Sometimes tough love is the only way to go.