Broody Hens

This week we prepared a second pen and did our "emergency reading" on what to do with a couple of hens that were going broody. This was very exciting because Road Island Reds aren't known to be particularly good instinctive mothers. And in our 3 years of keeping chickens we have never had one go broody so imagine our excitement! It was our prayer to be able to hatch out some of our own chicks and continue our layers each year so we have them laying in their prime while continuing to brood our new flock. We will mark these two mammas to see if they go broody again. If they do, they will not hit the pot as fast as the others! If this is something that we can continue to encourage, this will be wonderful! Because we won't have to repurchase layers again!! (That is our hope!) We had an old chicken tractor that was left behind by the previous owners that we had hoped to modify for our brooding hens, but when we pulled it out of the field it literally fell apart in our hands as we tried to move it. The wood was rotted all the way through. So (instead of doing what we had planned that day!) Ben got to building another one. He used the fence from the last one, and rebuilt the frame from scrap wood we had and put some boxes and a roof on a section of it. The boxes have an earthen bottom, because we read that it is better for the eggs in the latter stages of their development before they hatch. It has to do with the moisture received from sitting on the straw which sits on the ground. We read somewhere that it is best to separate the birds first and confirm that they are brooding. (They sit on a nest a lot and stops laying.) Check. An Amish man we know suggested that you transfer the hen quietly to a nest full of freshly laid eggs in the dark, for the smoothest transition. (He says that's what they do.) That is what we did and it seems to have worked. In 20-21 days, we hope to have about a dozen baby chicks chirping around their little cage!! We'll keep you posted. This post was shared on the Barn Hop #6