Saturday, May 10, 2008

Broody Hen

broody henOne of my young Rhode Island Red hens is broody. She is sitting on all the eggs and cannot be persuaded to move. She wants to hatch the eggs and have some chicks. She wants to be a mum.

The problem is, she isn't laying any eggs herself. She may not be eating or drinking either. Broody hens can die of hunger or thirst if they are just ignored. We've got to do something about it.

There are various techniques to stop her being broody. They all involve preventing her from settling down and getting comfy. For example, we could construct a broody coop - a suspended wire cage where she would be kept separate from the other hens until she gives up the idea of egg-sitting. The cage would be cosy and she would have water and food, so it's not as cruel as it sounds. Apparently it's usually successful within a few days. I've also heard of dunking the hen's undercarriage in cold water a couple of times a day. Now that does sound a bit cruel but I'm told it works. And I've seen an ingenious suggestion to replace the eggs with a frozen freezer block. You have to replace the freezer block a couple of times a day to keep it cold. I bet that would work a treat - the hen would have to be really determined to sit on that.

But there's another possibility - we could get some fertilised eggs and let her hatch them. Then in about three weeks we'd have chicks. It sounds like a lot of fun, but Ed very sensibly pointed out that we already have more eggs than we need, so we really don't need any more birds. Boo - what a spoilsport.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Butbutbut..........

Can't you let her hatch some eggs and give the chicks to someone who wants chickens and has none at present or back to the person supplying the fertile eggs?

Anonymous said...

we do want to increase our flock, so put fertilized eggs under our broody.. and she has three chicks now. you could raise them for meat?

Yellow said...

Yeah, I'd love to eat home reared chicken. Have you space to raise a meat chicken or two?

Anonymous said...

Meat! My thought too on reading this blog. I'll do you a chicken stir-fry with cashew nuts next time I come over.

Bobbie (Sunny) Cole said...

what a delightful post - poor broody...hope all works out for her AND her owners...

~ Sunny Lyn

Anonymous said...

I would happily pay towards feed and buy a chicken for dinner!

Of course, then I'd have to do the killing and cleaning but there's no time like the present for learning things like that!

Irish Sallygardens said...

We have a broody hen too, she is sitting on 4 of her own eggs and 3 of her friends eggs! She's a light sussex to a dual purpose bird, her hens are good layers and the males are nice heavy meat birds.

What kind of rooster do you have? Is he a RIR too? If so you could sell the chicks.

Melanie Rimmer said...

Ed doubts I could kill chickens I'd raised from chicks. I think there's only one way to find out, but it looks like we won't be doing it this year.

We don't have a rooster, just four hens. Roosters are noisy, they can be aggressive (I hear RIR roosters are downright evil), and since we don't want chicks we don't need a rooster.

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