Broody Chickens
Although chickens can and will go broody any time of year, they mostly do this in the spring and early summer.
You’ll know a chicken is broody because she won’t want to get off her eggs (apart from for a short time to eat and drink) and will become a bit nasty/pecky. She’ll fluff herself up bigger, make a lot of noise if you go near her and peck you if you try to take her eggs.
She’ll a few extra eggs in the first few days but then will stop. But what usually happens is the other chickens lay on top/around her and she pulls their eggs under her.
Although a chicken can hatch more than 10 eggs, it’s quite unusual, as it’s hard for her to keep them all warm. And if you allow her to keep ‘stealing’ other chickens’ eggs for many day after the first lot were sat on they’ll never hatch as they won’t be ready to hatch until way after the first lot hatch. As such I usually ‘allow’ her to have 8 or 9 eggs and I mark those with a pen (top and bottom, as they roll them to keep them warm all over) and then any extra I find under her, much to get disliking, I take away.
21 days after she first starts sitting on eggs the eggs should start hatching. If it goes past 30 days and nothing has happened, then I would usually buy a couple of baby chicks from someone else and pop them under her. If you are careful and put them in from behind, she somehow believes they are hers and she is content with this and gives up on the rest (which are clearly no longer viable). Chickens will also sit on and bring up other birds’ babies, so you can but chicken, duck, guinea fowl etc eggs under her also. If you do not give her, viable eggs, chicks or break her broodiness, then she’ll sit there forever. However, if you have some active roosters in the flock then this should not be an issue, and you should have a few chicks.
Chicks that have a mum do much better than one’s introduced without. They are healthier, more survive and they are accepted into the flock and also the mum protects them as much as she can too. For the first couple of weeks, she’ll be very protective, after that not so much.
I just used to let my mama’s and babies free range as soon as the mum thought they were old enough, but last year (for the first time) some birds of prey new to the area picked some of them off. So, this year they have a cover enclosure I am going to put them in once they hatch and this will protect them until they are a bit bigger.
The Mums will fight over who’s babies are who’s if you leave them to nest to close together once they are all born. So, it’s better to have separate ‘sleeping’ compartments for them.
If you don’t want babies, then you need to break the broodiness and you do this by repeatedly taking the eggs away from her (I can’t ever bring myself to do this).
Also, if you have a chicken all of a sudden that does not go home to the coop each night then she’s probably sitting on eggs somewhere too and that’ll be a nice surprise when we turns up one morning with a load of baby chicks.
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