Broody Hens

Broody hens can either be a Godsend (many exotic-chicken breeders agree with this line of thought) or something worse than the plague (such as large corporations who want eggs and only eggs). It all depends on the individual farmer and his or her purpose for raising chickens.

The term "broody hen" basically means a hen who sits on her eggs for the purpose of hatching them. It doesn't matter if the eggs are fertile or not, she'll sit on them and get that "back-off-or-I'll-kill-you" look in her eyes if anyone tries to stop her.

Do you want your hens to remain broody or is it better to "break" them? Well...if you want the highest ratio of egg per hen per pound of feed, it would be best to break the hen or she'll lower the flock's overall percentage of lay. On the other hand, if you want to hatch your own batch of cute little chicks (for fun or to replace culled hens), you might want to let the hen go through the 21-day cycle.

So, you don't want your hen to be broody and want to break her? The process of disrupting a hen's broodiness is relatively easy. But first, you should take a precaution before your hens become broody to save you the time and trouble. To lower the chance of one of your hens becoming broody, you should not allow eggs to collect in a nest. Once she is broody, moving her from her nest, moving or covering the nest so she can't get in, moving the hen to a separate cage or coop, or putting the hen in a broody coop should be sufficient to break her out of broodiness.