Who says Industrial chickens won't go broody?

She had to be carried from Hubby's Portable chicken shelter nest box, all the way out of the field and down to the coop we use as a brooder. I put her in the attached run in a large dog crate with no door. I didn't know if she'd accept the eggs and new accommodation and sure enough she spent the first afternoon checking out every corner of the run. By 9 pm she had built this awesome nest from the grass clippings I'd put in the crate and she's been glued to the eggs for a week and a half now.

I peek at her daily and she chirrups back when she hears my voice. I'm betting she'll be a great mom too.

5 days and counting. I think I'm starting to get excited to see how well they hatch  and how she does at being a mom.

I just had a young Muscovy totally malfunction at the mom role. She just couldn't transition from hard things you sit on to chirpy demanding things that move around. I'm really hoping that Miss Chicken will manage, as I don't have any great fall back plans. At the moment the electrical system that runs the brooder is on the sick list. I'm not sure the power to the area could even run a heat lamp. I suppose there's always the bath tub!

So this morning she was still on the nest, and I felt she needed to pay attention to the fuzzy things I could spot when I looked carefully, so I extricated her and removed any eggs left. The chicks didn't follow her, and mom didn't seem quite sure what to do, so rather than risk it, I dipped the chicks beaks in water and then put one of them beside her where she was pecking at baby food in the feeder. Then I let her be.

Can you count the fuzees in the nest?


This afternoon when I checked on her, she was outside the nest box, but between it, the feeder and the waterer, and there were no signs of chicks until Mom made some noises and then I heard a peep and saw one little head.

This morning there were actually 5 functional chicks and 1 DOA - I don't know if it hatched early and didn't get food fast enough, or if something was wrong with it. If the 5 left all survive, that will be a good number for a first time mom. Hens actually do better if they have enough chicks that they get pestered to pay attention to doing the mothering job!

What a lovely family!
I had a similar surprise. While I was sick last year and the year before, my Golden Comet (named Little Red Hen by my husband) decided to become a mom, managed to convince her flock-mates to fill a nest for her, and she sat about 20 eggs, we guess.
She had 5 chicks hatch, one lived to adulthood - snakes, cats, opossums, ... I'm always impressed at the chicks who make it through the gauntlet.
Her chick (Littler Red Hen) is currently sitting 9 eggs in a similar hidden (but much more protected) area of the yard.  I have high hopes that she will have better luck.

I'm so happy for you and her! I hope she's a great mom and all goes well for her family.

Happy Chicken

Our ex-factory farm hen Rainbow was adopted from a hen rescue charity at 18 months old;  at 4 years old she went broody for the first time and hatched and raised a nest--her little black flockmate went broody at the same time, maybe triggering her instinct?  She did it again at age 5!  Rainbow isn't with us any more but we still have one of her chickies left, now aged 3.

Well done, Rainbow! And twice - mine have only ever done so once.

I don't know if having other broody birds around triggers it, but I sometimes think a combination of weather and day length can do it. We've had industrial birds do this in their first year of laying , or after a couple of years, so it's not something I count on, but definitely something I watch for. My policy has always been that if a bird goes broody, I get to choose where she sits (for her safety and the safety of what she might hatch) but if she cooperates with being moved, she gets fertile eggs and gets to raise the babies. I will sometimes try to "delay" the process a bit if I've got an infrastructure crunch, which is why Mrs Coop landed in a dog crate, but I've heard horror stories of people trying to "break brood" with a hen - usually repeatedly - and if you can't accommodate that need in a chicken, it's time to find her a home that can!

Along with that policy, we've often been asked if we can give someone fertile eggs for a back-yard chicken and if for some reason we don't have them, we know other people who do and facilitate that.

Muppet News Flash

Mrs. Coop's cousin decided if Mrs. Coop could do it, why not her!!! I've never had two birds from the same flock go broody until this year. Let me introduce No-Name ISA brown mom-to-be (she'll get a name eventually...)


And just to prove that Mrs. Coop's a different bird... hmmm... maybe this doesn't prove it, but you'll just have to trust me that Mrs. Coop's still being the busy mom:


I got a good shot of 4/5 chicklettes and you can see #5's beak.

Let's hope the next one does a good job. At least with any luck I'll end up with enough hens to make a respectable little group!

My, but the farm has been *very* busy! Mrs. Coop's brood has really grown, but unfortunately we may have 3/5 roosters. I'm not positive yet, but  3 have brighter, larger combs, and two of those three have quite bright legs compared to the two I think are girls. That said, these are crosses of unknown paternal heritage, so I won't condemn anyone if they keep behaving themselves.

Mrs. Cooper (OK, I get *no* points for creativity on the naming scheme!) managed to hatch 5 also, which I thought was pretty impressive considering the distraction of the other babies right outside her door. She's got 2 white ones and 3 black ones, but hers have a different rooster, so that's not surprising.

At first I set up some dog X-pen fencing to keep the two moms separate. However, Mrs. Coop's chicks were already active enough that they tended to go over the fence. Mrs. Cooper was amazingly tolerant of the interlopers, but as is so typical of chickens, they could get to where I didn't want them, but couldn't get back! It was also harder for me to manage the run - it was *never* designed for this sort of use! So after about 2 weeks, I removed the divider. Mrs. Coop took serious offense to Mrs. Cooper sharing space, but I intervened a couple of times and they settled down without blood-shed. They had 2 feeders and 2 waterers, but Mrs. Coop +5 insisted baby feed tasted better, so I gave up on the pellets and put crumble in both feeders.

It's been fun watching them grow. Today I showed up with a bouquet of kale leaves. By the time I got back from getting a scoop of feed, the kale was eaten down to the stems. Yesterday I gave them a very leafy dandelion that I'd pulled from a pot and by this morning it was eaten down to the roots. They clearly love their greens!

What a happy little family!
How wonderful that they are growing so well. I agree that the chicks with brighter and larger combs are probably cockerels, but they should be fine hanging out with your flock until those hormones start coursing through their veins.

The chick crumble is higher in protein than general purpose layer feed, and higher in tasty vitamins and minerals than most flock feed. I expect moms to go ahead and eat the tasty chick feed when they have a chance, I figure it helps them to regain condition after having sat Very Still for a month.

Anything new and yummy will disappear. Chicks are definitely not shy about that. At least you don't have to nag them to eat their veggies!

sex-link chicks maybe?

Shookeli Riggs wrote:sex-link chicks maybe?

Both moms are sex-linked, but it's not a trait that carries because it's created by crossing 2 specific breeds.

The older chicks are white with some highlights developing. The rooster for them has predominantly white colouring with highlights.

The younger chicks all have a dad with grey mottled colouring.

It's interesting seeing the results of our "gene-splicing" experiment.

The local chickens bred for commercial egg production are called Hylines and Shavers.

They are supposed to not get broody but some of them didn't get the memo.

We had one girl nursing a stash not once but twice, several years ago. Sadly, we lost her to a native falcon attack

Megan Palmer wrote: We had one girl nursing a stash not once but twice, several years ago. Sadly, we lost her to a native falcon attack

This is why I'm happy to keep a couple of over-sized dog crates around. I always try to put my broodies in protective custody as generally the Hylines haven't got much of a clue about protecting themselves.

Despite having much of the broodiness bred out of them, it happens, but so far, once they've raised a clutch of chicks, they haven't gone broody a second time. That's part of why I feel letting them have babies is the best approach when it happens, even if you have to do serious searching to get them fertile eggs.