On being broody

Three broody bantams stare into space whilst sitting on a big pile…of nothing.

Your hen is sitting on her nest all day, catatonically staring into space. She’s making grumbly or angry noises when you touch her. She’s half bald as she’s plucked out the feathers on her chest to line her nest with. She may come out of the coop once a day for a quick bite to eat, then leaves you a gift of a GIANT SMELLY POOP and runs like mad back to her nest.

Congratulations, you have a broody hen.

Normal unbroody hens lay their egg, make a bunch of I-just-laid-an-egg noises then wander off to dust bathe or peck at worms, the egg immediately forgotten. A broody hen stays on the nest all day — her hormones have gone into overdrive and all she wants is to be a Mumma hen to a brood of little chicks.

In the wild, chickens lay eggs every day or two, some of which will have been fertilised if the chicken has been tangoing with the Rooster. At some point, her hormones will kick in and she’ll go broody. She will sit down on her big pile of eggs and incubate them. If she does it right, some of the fertile ones will develop an embryo and if she sticks it out on the eggs some chicks may hatch.

For backyard hens, the chook usually never has a big pile of eggs to hatch because we humans take them from the nest each day. So, when a hen goes broody she is often sitting on a big pile of nothing. Or she may sit on another hen’s egg. She won’t lay her own while she is broody, her body doesn’t have the reserves for both egg production and brooding.

Whether you have a rooster or not, clear the eggs everyday, it lessens the chance of predators feasting on them, plus it means we know how many chooks are laying each day, and removing eggs can help reduce the frequency of broodiness.

So why, you might ask, is it necessary to try to stop the hen from being broody when she is just wanting to do what nature intended? Because a broody hen doesn’t look after herself. She knows she can’t leave the nest for long or else her babies/big pile of nothing will die. She doesn’t eat properly or drink enough water. If that goes on for long enough your hen can become ill or even die or starvation or dehydration. This is very sad and completely preventable. Other problems for a broody hen — she won’t bathe so can get more mites or fleas than usual and she is a sitting duck for predators if she is free range.

So, how to recognise a broody hen? This is pretty straightforward, she’ll sit for hours on the nest and most hens will make grumbly angry sounds or screams when you touch her. Only one of our chooks, a little mottled pekin bantam, doesn’t make angry noises, she continues to make sweet little ‘bip bip’ sounds even when broody! When your hen does get up from the nest she will ‘cluck cluck cluck’ her way around and generally look agitated and annoyed at everything.

Usually if I see a hen sitting, I will leave her to sit for another hour or longer, to be sure she isn’t just in the process of laying an egg. Once you’re satisfied that she is broody there is a number of ways you can try to snap her out of it. Different things work for different hens, and quite frankly the thing that worked last time won’t always work next time for the same hen!

1. Remove eggs from next boxes. Broody hens can’t help themselves at the sight of a nice egg or two to sit on.
2. Remove the hen from the nest box. Pop her out in the daylight, give her a handful of food and a drink. When catching it early, on the first day with broody signs this may be enough to stop broodiness.
3. “Manage” the hen. This means lifting her out of the nest box several times a day, encouraging her to eat and drink, putting her out on the grass well away from the nest box with the others and generally doing gentle interventions to encourage her to give up / forget about being broody. It is a bit time consuming, but it is also a very gentle process. Won’t work for hard-out stubborn brooders.
4. Ice in the nest box. Hormones make the hen really hot on her tummy, to keep the eggs warm. Cooling down the hen can help break broodiness. Try ice in a sealed plastic bag then wrapped in an old tea towel and stick it under your sitting hen. The idea is to gently cool the hen not to freeze her parts off. This worked well for us the first time we had a broody hen who was sitting on a dozen eggs in a bush and had been broody for about two weeks by the time we realised what was going on.
5. Dunk in cool water. I’ve not done this myself yet, but I have read dunking their undercarriage (not the entire hen) into cool (not cold) water can work. You may have to do this a few times until she gives up being broody. Here is a short clip showing how to do this, without causing the bird any material amount of stress.

Note: Don’t do ice or cool/cold water techniques if the weather is not warm

6. The broody cage, a.k.a. chicken jail. The concept here is to put the hen into a place that she can’t nest in and that is light and airy, not dark like a nesting box, with a breeze through it to help cool her down. After a couple of days she will forget she was broody and be keen to rejoin the other chooks. I’ve not had to use one yet but here are a number of things I have learnt that will ensure your broody cage is suitable and humane, so you won’t be left feeling awful about sticking your hen in jail.

• Use a dog cage or a chicken run, or build a suitable cage, something that the chicken can move around in. A cat cage isn’t suitable.
• It should be wire netting or similar on the bottom and you need to elevate it slightly (using bricks etc) to allow a breeze to come through
• Put a perch in the broody cage. Whilst you don’t want the chicken to be all comfy in a bed of pine shavings as she will just sit down and brood, standing on chicken wire for three days is too uncomfortable in my opinion.
• Put the broody cage in the same place as existing chooks. If you remove her and put her in the broody cage, say, in the garage, the other chooks may pick on her like she is a newcomer when she comes back.

An example of a suitable broody cage. Wire bottom, elevated, with perch, food and water at the back, and situated with or near the other hens in a partially shady spot. Image courtesy of backyardchickens.com

• Make sure the broody cage is not in full sun and will have some shade at hot parts of the day
• Food and water, obviously.
• She doesn’t have to stay in the broody cage on her own overnight, if you don’t want her to. Take her out after dark (so she can’t see the nesting boxes) and place her on a perch in the coop with the others. Just remember to put her back in the broody cage next morning.

Personally, we currently use the ‘management’ technique, where we continue to lift the chooks out of the nesting box, give them food and distract them, take them well away into a sunny bit of grass. The first few times they run straight back to the cage but after that they will stay out longer and longer until they forget they were broody after a few days.

Currently, for the first time, all three of our bantam hens are broody at the same time. The title photo for this story is a photo I took of them yesterday staring into space in their nesting boxes. The good thing is that this means we’ve been able to shut them out of the nesting box for the day today. All three were happily out scratching in the grass this afternoon.

**Update the next day: 2 out of 3 hens gone back to broody, but at least one is out and about.

In terms of frequency and depth of broodiness, it depends on the breed. Unfortunately for us, the two types of bantams we have are rated as “very broody” and “extremely broody”. Between the three of them, at this time of year — summer — we’d be lucky to go more than a couple of weeks without someone going broody. Our neighbours leghorn chickens, who spend all their time at our place, are rated as “non-broody”. I’ve never seen them act broody at all. You can check your hen’s broodiness rating here

All in all, whilst being broody is a natural state for hens, it is not a good state for a hen to be in if she is not going to have chicks, so steps should be taken to gently break the broodiness and get back your happy, healthy and hungry hen.