There's nothing worse than a broody hen!

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Week 10: Diagnosis broody…

Everything was going swimmingly well at the Pearson’s, until Poppet, the chicken, decided that it was time to be broody.

Broody chickens

Her broodiness was further confirmed as she has now sat on the nest for five days, even though we diligently remove the eggs every day.

We still haven’t been on our chicken-keeping course, which I am assuming will tell us how to deal with this situation, so instead, I’ve done my own research.

The classic description of a broody chicken is something like this:

Is the broody hen sitting in the nesting box refusing to budge. CHECK.
Does she make a peculiar growling noise if disturbed and become quite aggressive? CHECK (Those beaks can hurt!).
Has she has been near a cockerel within the last seven days (so the eggs will not be fertilised and will never hatch into chicks) NOPE.

So, how do I solve the problem? I found the following advice after browsing the internet.

If we do nothing, she will stay like this for up to three weeks (the incubation time for eggs) – visions of Jemima Puddleduck come to mind!

It is not necessarily a problem, but it will prevent the other chickens from laying in the nesting box – that is a problem, we don’t want the others getting egg-bound at the same time!

So I must: remove her from the nest and block the nesting box, so that she cannot get in. Be brave, open up the egg port and lift her off is the advice… After a couple of days she will lose the urge to sit on the eggs and we can open up the box again.

I was brave.

I shooed her out of the box and we will see what happens tomorrow.

Chicken talk

On my quest to solve Poppet’s broodiness, I discovered how to say cock-a-doodle-do in over 20 different languages! Here are few:

Chinese: gue-gue ou gou-gou
Danish: kykliky
Finnish: kukkokeikuu
French: cocorico
German: kikeriki
Greek: kikiriki
Hebrew: coucouricou
Gaelic: cuc-a-dudal-du
Italian: chicchirichi
Japanese: kou-kou-kou-kou

You can find the full list on the Omlet website.

I wonder what chicken is for ‘I feel broody’?

Next week: Missing eggs and egg-munching cannibals

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