How to stop a chicken from brooding

When you keep chickens, a hen's eggs may be fertilized or unfertilized. The broody hen is the name for a dedicated mother bird that has begun to sit on and incubate the eggs day and night, leaving only once daily to eat, drink, and poop. If you try to remove her from her eggs, she may hiss and peck at you.

What Is a Broody Hen?

A broody hen is a chicken that has decided to incubate a clutch of eggs by sitting on them all day long.

Broodiness is driven by several factors: genetics, hormones, instinct, and lighting conditions. In addition, your actions can affect a broody hen's behavior, and handling one may take some work, so you'll want to decide if you're up for the challenge.

Signs of a Broody Hen

If a hen has a dark, comfortable, undisturbed spot where she can nest, she may roll a clutch of eggs (usually 12 to 14) to that spot and begin to brood. You can spot a broody hen by the following behaviors she'll exhibit:

• She won't leave the nest to roost with the rest of the chickens at night.
• She will pluck the feathers from her own breast so that her moist, warm skin keeps the eggs warm, and she'll use the feathers to insulate the nest.
• She will become extremely territorial and hiss, growl, shriek, puff up, and peck at you when you come near her.

Best Ways to Prevent Brooding

You won't need to worry about young hens because they don't typically go broody during their first laying season. It's the more mature ones you will need to keep an eye on, especially in the spring when it's chick-raising season. Hens do not usually get broody in the winter. It takes some doing, but you can prevent brooding hens by using a few methods.

• Collecting eggs regularly can help prevent hens from going broody, so don't neglect this important part of caring for your chickens.
• Make sure the hens do not go back into the nesting box after they lay their eggs that day.
• Choose a breed that is less broody, such as Sussex and Leghorns. These hybrid breeds are still great egg producers but are not instinctual brooders. Some breeds are more prone to going broody than others. Buff Orpingtons and Cochins, for example, are very broody hens, which is ideal if you want to raise chicks.

How to “Break” a Broody Hen

If you don't want your hen to hatch eggs or don't have fertilized eggs, you will want to "break" your broody hen. This means stopping the brooding behavior. It's important to do this because broodiness becomes contagious, with other hens catching the idea and sitting on still more clutches of eggs. And being broody for too long is not the best for a hen's physical health. There are a few ways to break broodiness.

Actively Disturb Her

Start by trying to disturb her when she is in the nest box. Wear gloves while doing this because she will peck at you.

Remove Her

You may need to remove her several times a day to a separate place without access to the nest boxes but with access to food and water. She will try to find the nesting box, so it's best to block it off with a piece of wood, for example. To prevent the hen from roaming back to the nest, sometimes it helps to place her in a big, airy crate with a mesh bottom for three days to break her broodiness.

Freeze Her Out

You may also try setting a clutch of ice cubes in the nest box so that, when she returns to it, it's unpleasant. Hens hate the feeling of wetness on their bodies. You can also use bags of frozen vegetables in place of ice.

Tip

You can tell when you've broken a broody hen by trying to pet her. She won't puff up, hiss, or peck at you if she's no longer broody.

How to Care for Brooding Hens

If you have a rooster and you want your flock to reproduce naturally, you may be pleased if a hen goes broody. What you should do is remove her and her clutch to a separate area with food and water. This way, another hen won't force her off her clutch, leaving them to become chilled and die. You may need to make sure your broody hen eats and drinks enough by physically removing her from the nest and bringing her to her food and water dishes.

It takes 21 days for a fertilized egg to develop into a new baby chick and hatch, so keep an eye on the calendar.

The Spruce / Steven Merkel

In this guide, we will explore some tips to stop a chicken from brooding and also how to treat your isolating hen. We call a chicken brooding’ or broody’ when the chicken wants to hatch its own eggs. A broody chicken has decided to sit on a clutch of eggs day and night. Regardless of whether the eggs are unfertilized or fertilized.

Typically, the brooding chicken will only leave the eggs once daily to eat, drink, and poop. The problem is, if you try to remove the brooding hen from the eggs, she may peck and attack you.

So, broodiness can be a big issue for your egg supply, and this condition can spread throughout your flock. So, you’d need to break chicken brooding as soon as possible.

Signs of Brooding Chicken

It’s quite easy to check whether you have a brooding chicken. Their behavior changes dramatically, and you might have a very grumpy hen in your care.

Here are some common signs of a broody chicken:

• They will refuse to move from the nesting box and might hiss and peck at you when you try to remove them.
• Usually, they will get up only once or at most twice a day.
• The hen can fluff their feathers to make themselves look big and try to “protect” their eggs
• Even after you’ve managed to remove the brooding chicken, they might run back to the next box right away
• Plucking their own chest feathers. This is so they can provide more warmth to their clutch of eggs.
• A brooding chicken won’t lay any eggs. She will put all her effort into producing maximum body temperature. So they won’t have any extra energy into creating more eggs.

Causes of Brooding Chicken

Chickens, like most if not all animals, rely on instincts, and not intellectual. So, your isolating hen might just be getting older and maturing, causing them to brood.

An increased length of day can encourage the chicken to release prolactin hormone. Then, the combination of prolactin and sunlight cause brooding.

When the chicken feels that instinct to hatch eggs due to these factors, they will go into a dark and quiet place. In most cases, this is your nesting box. It would make no difference whether there is a clutch of eggs or not, or whether the eggs are not fertile.

Even when there are no eggs around, they will start brooding due to their instinct.

Why Brooding Can be an Issue

If you want to hatch more chicks, then obviously brooder chickens are good news. However, there are also some issues of having brooding chickens:

• A decrease in egg production since brooding hens won’t lay eggs.
• Broodiness can be contagious. When one isolating hen is brooding, others may also start sitting.
• Brooding hens can steal other hen’s eggs to sit on. They may even scare the other hens out of the nest box and will disrupt their egg production.
• In some cases, brooding chickens will sit on eggs forever, even if they aren’t fertile.
• Brooding can compromise the chicken’s health.

There are also cases where hens sit on rocks or even golf balls. The chicken simply won’t care whether the egg is not fertile.

During this extended sitting period, they won’t eat or drink properly. In most cases, they will also avoid dust bathing and won’t take care of themselves in general.

Tips To Stop Brooding Chicken

There are several methods we can try to stop broody hen, and below we will discuss some of the most effective ones.

However, here are some general tips to follow:

1. Leaving her alone

You can choose to just let the broody hen run its course. An ordinary brooding chicken will last for roughly three weeks (a typical timeline to hatch eggs.) This will, in most times, require the help of fertilized eggs, which we will discuss below.

If you choose this approach, make sure to remove them from the next box for a few hours every day. This is to ensure they have enough drinks and food.

This is not recommended if the brooding hen is particularly aggressive. The hen might peck at the other hens in the nest box, so you might need a separate box. You might want to remove the brooder chickens out of the coop when other hens have laid their eggs.

Always remember to wear gloves when removing a brooding hen to avoid injury.

2. Buy some fertilized eggs

Make the most of your brooding hens and buy some fertilized eggs so you can produce some chicks. Using hens to produce chicks is much easier than using an incubator.

This is a natural way to break the chicken brooding. Also, the hen can take care of the whole process from incubation to rearing to teaching the chicks.

3. Preventive Actions

You can do the following to prevent broodiness as early as possible:

• Collect the eggs regularly for multiple times a day. The idea is to prevent too many eggs lying in the nesting boxes for too long
• Hang drapes, curtains, or other material over the nesting box if necessary when the hens are outside. The idea is to cover the eggs away from the hen’s sight.

Next, we will discuss more specific methods to break chicken brooding.

The “Boomerang” Technique

This is a technique that is highly effective if you caught your chicken in the early stages of brooding.

1. Remove the broody hen from the nest multiple times a day. Again, make sure to wear protective gloves.
2. Use treats or “bribes” like dried mealworms to keep the hen out of the nest box.
3. Another trick is to take the hen out of the nesting box and onto the roosts at night. In most cases, once moved, they are too timid to make their way back in the dark.

The Lock-Out Technique

As the name of the technique suggests, this will involve locking the brooding chicken out of the nest box. You can:

1. In the morning, lock the hens out of the nest box after they have laid the eggs. Make sure they are well protected from the heat and predators. Also, give them adequate food and water.
2. Block the nest box for the day. However, aggressive and determined hens might build their own temporary nests.

Enclosure Method

You can use a wire cage or dog crate in a well-lit location. It might seem harsh at first, but you should place the brooding hen in this cage with food and water.

The wire cage is naturally uncomfortable for the brooding chicken. Thus, it can naturally cool down her chest and vent area, which can break the broodiness.

The length of time required to stop brooding can vary a lot with different hens. However, in most cases, it will take only around three days.

You can easily know when the hen is no longer broody as she will no longer fluff her feather out. Also, when let out from this wire cage, she won’t hurry to the nest.

Again, although this might seem like a cruel method, it is one of the most proven techniques. In the long run, this is better than allowing your hen to sit for a prolonged time which can endanger her health.

Cool her down

A brooding chicken has her temperature increased. So, by lowering her temperature, we can naturally break chicken brooding.

Dip the bottom of your brooding chicken in a bucket of cold water. You should only use this in the warm summer months. Another method is to place frozen peas or ice cubes underneath her.

Broody-Breaking Box

The kindest but also one of the most reliable methods to stop brooding.

The idea here is still the same: placing the hen somewhere they can nest. We can use hospital pens or a birdcage here. We should raise the containment box a bit with a wire floor underneath. This is so air can pass underneath and cool the hen.

The wire floor must be thick enough so that it doesn’t damage the hen, and make sure there’s no nesting material. Also, make sure there are no dark spots in this pen.

As always, make sure to provide enough food and water, and you can add a roost if you like.

Let the hen out after two or three days, and check whether the brooding signs have disappeared. If it’s a persistent hen or the broodiness has been prolonged, they may go back to the nest. In this case, leave them in the box a bit longer.

Conclusion

Brooding hens can be the worst thing to happen in your backyard chicken flock, especially if you are focusing on egg production. Brooding hens will stop laying eggs, and worse, broodiness can be contagious and affect the whole nest.

Above, we have shared some simple but effective methods to break the hens from brooding. These simple methods can help your hens to stop brooding, promote their health, and allow them to lay eggs again in a reasonably short time. 

Below is a Pinterest friendly photo…. so you can pin it to your Chicken Board!!

How long will a chicken stay broody?

How do you break a broody hens cycle?

How do you stop a hen from setting?

Is it cruel to break a broody hen?