A Very Broody Mayzie

Broody Mayzie

One of our Plymouth Barred Rock hens, Mayzie, has gone very broody. "Broody" means that she has decided that it's time for her to start the process of hatching eggs, so she stays in a nesting box all day and all night to incubate them. Maybe once or twice a day, for a very short time, she will come out for a quick drink of water and a bite to eat, and then it's right back to the nesting box. Being broody is not very good for hens because they eat and drink so much less than normal and get no exercise. Of course, if she were sitting on fertile eggs, it would be worth it, because after 21 days, she'd have babies hatching. But since our eggs are not fertile, she's sacrificing her health for no reason.

Broody Mayzie.
She pulled out her belly feathers so she could literally "feather her nest".

My initial reaction was to try to break her broodiness. Hens go broody because their hormones raise their body temperatures, so in order to break her broodiness, we have to start by getting her temperature down. Many people do this by putting them in something like a rabbit hutch, that has a wire bottom, so that cool air can get below them. After a few days in the rabbit hutch, they usually go back to normal. So we started looking into finding a rabbit hutch.

But then we found out that one of our farm supply stores have a shipment of a certain breed of chicks that we are interested in coming next week. Hmmm, that changed everything. Maybe we would be able to give our broody Mayzie the baby chicks that she's hoping for after all.

So, now, instead of discouraging her broodiness, I have moved her into a pet carrier nesting box, and put some fake eggs in there for her to sit on. Next week, I will move Mayzie and her pet carrier nesting box into our heated tackroom and set up a bigger brooding area. (She needs to be separated because the other hens may attack the babies.) We are keeping our fingers crossed that Mayzie accepts these baby chicks as her own. And, of course, we are ready to care for the chicks ourselves if Mayzie rejects them. Very excited to be adding to our flock!

The pet carrier nesting box with fake eggs in it.

Now, we're trying to encourage Mayzie to be broody in this nesting box
so we can move her to the tackroom for when the baby chicks arrive.
(I have since added curtains for more privacy/darkness.)

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Yup, more snow last week!
Perpetual winter in Massachusetts!

Although, we did have our first sign of Spring...
Flowers are trying to emerge despite the snow.

We came home one evening last week and found a hawk in our driveway.

It was feasting on some sort of rodent.
I couldn't believe how close it let us get before flying away.

Muddy-doodle