This is Broody…she has this name for a dang good reason…she is constantly brooding!  This girl!

I’ve read a bunch on having a broody hen:  take her constantly out of the nesting box, put ice bottles under her so she doesn’t get warm, put her in a separate cage to piss her off until she is over her brooding.  I’ve tried all of these and they work!  But in about 6 months she will start brooding again.  It is an instinct thing that she has…and she is my ONLY hen that has ever been broody.  I keep telling her that 1) there are no roosters around = no babies; and 2) you don’t have any eggs under you!  She won’t listen.

I don’t know if this is the best thing to do, but I just let her do her thing this time.  I would go out every day and take her to the outside coop to make sure she was getting something to eat and drink…but other than that I just let her decide when she was done trying to hatch imaginary eggs.  It took 6 weeks…now she is back with the other girls and bossing them around (I bet they like when she goes broody).