Taking care of broody hens is different than taking care of non-broody hens. When hens go broody their personality changes.
A broody hen is stubborn and aggressive, it will be aggressive to its flock members and to you. Other behaviors that this bird may exhibit include switching nest boxes, this article looks into why this happens.
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Broody hen keeps switching nests:
If you’ve ever raised broody hens you’d know that these birds like to stay put in their nest boxes. Broody hens only move out of their nestboxes to drink water, eat and poop.
If your bird keeps switching nest boxes here are the possible reasons why:
She’s confused:
Chickens can get confused pretty easily, different eggs and different nest boxes look the same and a hen may not be able to differentiate between the different nest boxes.
If a chicken gets up to eat, drink water, or poop, the bird may come back, be confused and sit on the wrong eggs in the wrong nest box
What to do:
A hen sitting in the wrong nest box and on the wrong set of eggs won’t be good for the eggs. The chicks in the eggs will stop developing if they aren’t kept warm.
Keep your hen from switching nest boxes by enclosing the area between her food, water, and her nest box.
Doing this ensures that she only has one nest box to go back to after getting up to eat, drink, or poop. Enclose the area by building a cage around her nest box and her food and water sources.
She doesn’t need too much room in this enclosure but give her enough room to where she has to get up and walk to get food and water.
If she poops close to her food and water you’d have to clean this up. You likely won’t have to clean the nest box of any poop, the bird knows not to poop near a nest.
You can alternatively allow the bird to keep switching from nest to nest and check twice a day whether her eggs are under her or not.
Mark her eggs and make sure that these marked eggs are under her when you check on her. If they aren’t under her, find the eggs and place them under her.
You don’t have to check her too frequently because she won’t be getting up to eat, drink or poop too often.
Too much activity:
Birds prefer to brood their eggs in a private and hidden nest box.
If a coop is too busy, then the other birds may push the broody hen out of a nest box because they want to lay their eggs in the nest box. Your broody hen may not be willing to fight for her nest box.
If she is low in the pecking order then this may happen often.
Another downside of having a coop that is too full is that the mother bird won’t be able to protect her babies from so many hens once the eggs finally hatch
What to do:
You’d need to create a space for her that is isolated, private, and hidden from her other flock members.
She won’t have to move around too much if she has a safe place to settle, relax and brood her eggs.
Do this by moving her into her own private enclosure with a nest box. Give her access to food and water and a place where she can poop freely in this enclosure.
Doing this will ensure that she won’t be disturbed by other birds who want to use her nest box.
We recommend that you move the bird into the enclosure at night. There is a higher chance of a move being successful at night than a move being successful during the day.
The benefit of moving the bird at night is that even though the mother hen may wake up, she will likely fall right back to sleep after being moved.
You can move the nest early in the wee hours of the morning or you can do this about 2-4 hours after sundown.
Don’t turn the lights on when you move the bird, keeping the lights off is more likely to keep her asleep while you move her.
If you don’t have enough room to give your broody hen her own space to brood in peace, then you’d have to regularly move any birds who keep pushing her out of her nest box.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other chicken related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: What To Feed A Broody Hen, Broody Hen Has No Eggs, Rooster Hates One Hen, Rooster Biting Hens Neck
