Encouraging broody behavior in a hen?
This is the latest attempt at
encouraging one of our hens to get in a broody
mood.
We've been saving fertilized
eggs, and with any luck one of them will start sitting full time in a
few days.
The plan will be to block her
in once she shows an interest. We also want to keep other hens from
disturbing that broody feeling.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Zimmy --- It's an old plumbing connector adapted to a broody area. Clearly, Mark should have made one of his collages --- maybe he'll make another post about that!
John --- I keep thinking that managing broody hens shouldn't be that hard, but it does seem to take a lot of learning and TLC! We've never had full luck with one yet, but are still trying.
Some girls feel the need to boil some eggs, while others don't...
I put all of my eggs in incubators, but I think Its good insurance to have broody hens. That being said! Its not as easy to find good sitters as you might think.. Iv had alot of problems finding any broody girls, even in broody breeds, that are willing to sit and actually be good mothers..
Maybe its just the way it is with domestic breeds, even crosses.
I'm raising some feral chicks atm(That I actually caught outside the city dump of all places) in hopes that I will get a nice line of broody hens going...