The Broody Hen

A broody hen is a hen that wants to hatch out her eggs.  In most cases, hens lay their eggs and then sing a proud little song (You'd probably sing a song too if you successfully laid an egg!)  and they are back out to the pasture, scratching, eating, and cavorting around with their chicken friends.  They aren't interested in sitting on the eggs that they lay most days.  But every once in a while, a hen will become broody. I would assume that the motherly instinct kicks in and they suddenly want to bring some new little ones into the world, much as humans do.

Broody hens seem like they are in a 'fowl' mood, pardon the pun.  When you try to pick up the eggs beneath a broody hen, she'll fluff up her feathers, make angry noises and will peck you with her beak. We have a broody hen in one of the nesting boxes in the barn right now.  She is a Black Star hen that was given to me by a good friend.  A Black Star chicken is a brown egg layer that is a cross between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen.  This breed must be exceptionally good mothers as we've not had much success with broody hens hatching out babies, but the hen that just hatched out some chicks was a Black Star and now a few weeks later, this girl is trying to do likewise.

We had a little family meeting and decided to allow her to try to hatch out some chicks. Benjamin went out to gather eggs and marked all the eggs underneath her with a pencil and also moved the two eggs under her that were in the neighboring nesting box that you see below.  We'll let her set for 21 days and pick up any new eggs each day we find under her that are not marked.  (Note: The darker colored egg below is a wooden egg that entices hens to lay and also is there to ward against snakes as described in the snake blog post.  Obviously we didn't put that under her.)

Sally Hennypenny is Broody!

I think in total there are either 4 or 6 eggs in her clutch underneath her right now. In addition to the chicks that the previous hen hatched out and the 23 chicks that we successfully hatched out of our incubator, we're allowing her to set on her eggs to hopefully replenish/re-freshen our current hens. They are getting old and some have been laying for years.  Some are looking rough, skinny, with faded feathers and I think we may have some that won't make it through the summer.  They are played out!

You can usually count on 50% of the chicks being roosters and 50% being hens. We'll eat the roosters and let the hens lay eggs for us.  They'll begin laying at about 24 weeks of age.  So far, we can estimate to have 13 hens from those that hatched. (I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch.) Those 13 hens will lay upwards of 170 eggs per year, so we're adding approximately 2,210 eggs per year or 184 dozen per year to our current egg production capacity.

Bringing new hens on the pasture keeps our egg production up and ensures that we have young whippersnappers ready to assume the egg laying role once the older girls "retire."  In the meantime, we'll take care of the broody hen.  Broody hens sit all day long, for weeks on end, and only briefly get up to go eat a little food and drink water.  They are primarily focused on providing necessary warmth to the eggs to develop the embryo so that baby chicks pop out in 21 days.

Broody Hen on day 2

She is not happy with the attention I'm giving her, so I'll back away and give her some space. Hopefully she'll have success and we'll have a new generation of chicks to populate the green pastures on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.