Gone Broody

Well it finally happened. One of our hens has gone "broody". I suspected that a hen "going broody" meant that she was a bossy little snot; one prone to rule the roost. In that case I thought our girl Red was the broody one, but now I have a much clearer picture.
Lemme esplain...

A few days ago, Olivia and I went out to go get "EEEEEggs!". Well, at least that's how Olivia says it. Afternoon time is usually when the girls have finished their laying, so I'll ask Olivia "Do you want to help Mommy go get the chicken's eggs?". She usually responds with a small, eagle-like shriek of excitement, and then we head outside. Once at the coop, she can't wait for me to get the latch undone so she can pull the door open to peer into the nesting boxes to look for her treasure. When we find eggs, she will gasp and say "Eeegs!"...as if we hadn't just walked through the whole routine as we had the day before...and all the days before that. I love her enthusiasm for the simple things in life. She brings me such joy and cause to laugh at stuff I wouldn't normally pay attention to. But back to my story about broodiness.

A few days ago on one of our our egg gathering adventures, one of the hens had grown a little excited and left a present on her sphere. Not having an extra hand to separate clean from the dirty eggs, I planned to gather it later. Had I given it to Olivia to hold she'd have surely tasted something unpleasant, and we just weren't going there. Now, contrary to popular belief, though I am a woman of many talents, I find it difficult to hold a squirming child in one arm, while trying my best not to crush three eggs in my other hand...and still latch a chicken coop and successfully make it indoors w/out dropping either. In short, we left the poopy egg for later. And of course...when "later" had arrived, I'd completely forgotten about it. The next day, the same thing happened, except the poopy egg pile had grown by two. Eww. Not touchin' those babies.

My two days of leaving eggs to gather later was just enough time to stir something in our sweet Milk Toast. Yes my friends, whatever it was about those poopy little spheres was enough to endear that chicken into thinking she was their Mommy. And that they desperately needed her help to be brought into this world. And so she began sitting on them. I didn't really think about it when I first saw her, except that it was odd she was in the nest after she'd laid her eggs...but hey, I'm still pretty new to this whole chicken farming thing. The next day when my girl and I went to get eggs, again we found a chicken. One that did not want to get up from her nest. One that did not want my hand reaching in to gather ANYTHING from underneath her. And so she pecked at me...and I fled. Well, I didn't run away exactly, but my hand quickly retreated to safety.

Two days of this kind of odd behavior led me to talk to a few friends with chickens and to do an internet search. Everything I was hearing and had read led me to believe that, yep, we had a broody hen. The lil' gal didn't even know the eggs she was trying to hatch weren't even fertile. Poor Milk Toast.

When Andrew got home today, we had to extract her from the box. Everyone says they had to bring their hen out of her broodiness with a shock...some even dunking their bird under water! The urgency with bringing a hen out of her broodiness is because if she gets too far into her chicken-mothering hormones, she will stop laying eggs for a time. I personally like omelets and souffles, so we needed to do something...and quick! My brave Andrew reached his hands right in that box, even with her pecks and protests, and pulled her right out. She is now grazing outside the coop and will hopefully not mourn her (now missing) eggs too much.

We will see what tomorrow will hold. If she goes back to being broody...well, then we just may be holding a revival tomor
row and have to baptize ourselves a chicken! I'll keep y'all posted. ;)

The Dread Pirate Roberts (L) and sweet, motherly Milk Toast (R)